


Dreaming While You Sleep

by commoncomitatus



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 7 [3]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Dreams, F/F, Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that they don't communicate.  It's just that Janice refuses to talk when she's awake and refuses to shut up when she's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com) Round 7.  
> Prompt: Begging

—

Janice sleeps with her revolver.

Now, that’s not exactly the kind of information a self-respecting young woman like Mel Pappas ought to know about, but apparently ‘needs must’ or some other such nonsense. Or so it is when they’re running half-cocked from one end of Eurasia to the other on a budget of nickels and dimes in search of buried scrolls that may or may not actually exist. Over the past few weeks, Mel has slowly but surely come to accept that signing on with Janice Covington, more often than not, means signing away a gal’s right to privacy.

Not that she minds that part, exactly. Most of the time, at least, that’s just the way things are. She’s heard all that stuff about sacrifice for the greater good and whatever else the ‘real’ academics keep yammering about, and she accepted that long before she followed some old telegram all the way out here. She knows it’s hard work, knows that you can’t expect to just stroll headlong into some random tomb and walk away with an armful of history.

(Well. Not every time, anyhow.)

Point is, she understands the whole ‘needs must in the name of the job’ thing. Doesn’t rightly appreciate it, mind, least of all at four in the morning when Janice is burning the midnight oil over some scrap of this or that and all Mel wants is five gosh-darn minutes’ worth of beauty sleep, but even then she understands it. She wanted in on this quirky little joy-ride, this is the price to pay.

They share a lot of things, her and Janice. Food, water, tools and tents and toothbrushes, even the driving seat of that beat-up old truck when Janice is too exhausted to drive straight. She’s real protective of that truck — and, well, everything else Mel dares to look sideways at — but it gets kind of hard to play the possessiveness card after the third or fourth time she’s drifted off in front of the wheel and almost totalled the darn thing.

Given the whole ‘burning the midnight oil’ thing, Mel probably should have anticipated that this would be a problem.

In any event, after all that it’s a pretty small step to sharing sleeping spaces and the like. They sleep in all sorts of crazy places, not least of all the truck itself. Janice curls up in the front seat, Mel in the back, and if there’s a strange kind of chivalry in the way she always ends up getting the roomiest spots to stretch out in, neither one of them mentions it. Mel’s learned by now never to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when its name is Janice Covington.

The revolver, though… well, now, that’s a different kind of constant. It doesn’t much matter if they’re sleeping in the truck or in one of those moth-eaten tents on the fringes of a dig site or in some two-bit motel some place that calls itself civilisation. Mel halfway suspects they could be sleeping in a golden palace, surrounded by bodyguards and Heaven only knows what, and it’d still be right there, that silly-looking thing under Janice’s pillow.

It might make her feel safe, sure enough, but it has the opposite effect on Mel.

“Kinda dangerous, don’t you think?” she asks, when she can’t take it any more.

They’re just under halfway between dig sites. Two days behind them and three still in front, and with no sign of civilisation in any direction it’s looking like another night in the truck for them both. It’s probably not the best time to touch a nerve, to be honest, but what the heck. It’s all too easy to get bored out here, and Janice isn’t exactly the chit-chat type. The closest thing to conversation Mel’s gotten out of her in the last five or six hours was a noncommittal grunt when she asked what was for supper.

So, sure, maybe it does feel like a kind of victory when she gets a real reaction this time. Janice looks up with daggers in her eyes, all but ready to make this into a fight before Mel’s even started trying to make her point.

“The hell are you talking about?” she growls.

It’s a warning only pretending to be a question, and Mel knows that because she’s got the gun in her hand as she says it, waving it around like it’s not a loaded lethal weapon or anything. It’s not exactly subtle, the way she shoves that thing in her face like she’s compensating for other kinds of deficits, and Mel can’t really do anything but stare at the shiny silver barrel. Is this how things work in Janice’s world, she wonders, but knows better than to voice that particular question out loud. That way lies madness, and probably a couple dozen lectures about how she’s in charge and Mel just has to take it. Sure as heck wouldn’t be the first time. Or the fortieth.

“That gun of yours,” Mel says, picking out her words with care. “I mean, sure, it’s dangerous out here too. Not arguing that part. But do you really gotta take the darn thing to bed with you?”

Janice cuts a pointed glance at the nothing all around them. “Ain’t what I’d call a bed,” she mutters.

Mel can tell that she’s just arguing for the sake of it now, being contrary because it’s the only thing she knows how to be. Well, that might work well enough with week-long hires or the people she bosses around down the wire every night, but it doesn’t hold much water with Mel. Stubborn as she is, even Janice has to realise that she’s less and less intimidating with every compromising position Mel catches her in.

“Don’t you take that tone,” she chides, and crosses her arms. She’s not really gunning for a fight like Janice is, but she’s not about to take another spoonful of that attitude either. “You know full well what I mean. Sleeping with that thing under your head. Now, we all know how thick that skull of yours is, but don’t you reckon it’s asking for trouble?”

“You got a problem?” Janice snaps. “My truck, my gun, my rules. Keep pushing, and you’ll be sleeping on the side of the road. _Alone_.”

There’s real weight on that word, like it’s the worst thing in the whole darn world. Mel doesn’t point out that she slept alone just fine every night before she wandered into Janice’s tent that day, and she definitely doesn’t point out that it might be a nice change of pace for once. The good Lord knows, she’s all but forgotten what peace and quiet sounds like.

Still, she doesn’t let that show. Janice’s ego is fragile enough at the best of times, and Mel doesn’t want to tempt fate when she’s trying to make a bigger point. So, instead, she just shakes her head and smiles sweetly. Fact is, she knows Janice’s threat is empty; she knows the woman well enough by now to recognise when she’s all bark and no bite, and she’s definitely not above pushing her a little, letting her know real well that she sees it.

“Well, now,” she says. “At least I’d be able to sleep there without worrying you’ll blast my head off if you have a bad dream.”

“Trust me,” Janice fires back. She’s not smiling — she never does — but her teeth are real sharp. “If I do blast your head off, it won’t be a _bad_ dream.”

Mel chuckles. “You hush yourself, Janice Covington. If you didn’t enjoy my company you’d’ve been shot of me long before now. That smart mouth of yours isn’t fooling no-one.”

Janice opens said mouth, then shuts it again real fast, and turns away before Mel can make out her expression. Mel wants to shout to the Heavens in frustration — she was _so darn close_ to getting more than three words out of her — but she doesn’t. There’s tempting fate, and then there’s putting her ear to the ground in the middle of a minefield.

Apparently, the revolver is just one of Janice’s little oddities, one of the countless little things that carry more weight than they seem to at first glance. Maybe more weight than someone like Mel is allowed to see at all. Janice isn’t the kind of gal who wilfully keeps secrets — she doesn’t talk much, but when she does it’s with meaning — but she’s not the kind who wears her heart out on her sleeve either. She’s got the scowling tight-jawed look down cold, and that arrogant, angry pride of hers is a beast all its own.

Sometimes Mel wants to reach out to her, tell her that it doesn’t matter how she looks or acts or all the rest of it. She knows how Janice felt when she found out that Xena wasn’t her ancestor after all, that it was Gabrielle the _‘useless tag-along’_ , that Mel’s the one with hero’s blood in her veins. Mel tries not to think much about that — she’s no more the hero type herself than Janice is the sidekick type — but sometimes she just wants to shake the stubborn, bull-headed thing by the collar until she understands that the past shouldn’t define the future.

Xena’s stories aren’t hers, not either of theirs, and Mel wishes Janice could cut the two apart even just a little. She tries to say it sometimes, but every time she makes the effort Janice shoots her that look, that _‘you’ll be sleeping on the roadside’_ stare she just gave her a second ago, and Mel feels her courage quit her completely. Janice doesn’t often scare her, but the good Lord knows she could drop a man three times her size with that stare of hers. She’s real mean when she needs to be, and in her head that’s always.

Mel knows better, sure, but how is she supposed to break through to someone with a thick head and a hard heart? Janice doesn’t listen to most anyone, and she sure as heck doesn’t listen to Mel.

It’s late. That’s the other problem, of course. It’s late and getting later; the sky’s indigo-dark, and it’s not exactly the right setting for an argument. They’re not going anywhere, and whether or not she pushes her luck, Mel’s still gonna be stuck in this darn truck for with a moody, sulky Janice for at least another couple of days. She doesn’t want to bite herself in the behind just to prove some silly point, and as stubborn as Janice is, Mel just isn’t the same way herself; she’ll take comfort over being right any day of the week. Her daddy was the stubborn one, the one who would do anything to see a job done well; Mel was just the obedient daughter who did as she was told.

That attitude ought to go down better than it does with someone like Janice. Janice, she never asks for nothing. She doesn’t say _‘please’_ , doesn’t ask _‘do you mind?’_ , doesn’t say or do anything that decent self-respecting folks would call polite. All she does is grit her teeth and spit tobacco, says _‘do this’_ and _‘do that’_ and gets herself all worked up when Mel doesn’t do it fast enough or hard enough or good enough. Mel’s willing and well-behaved, sure, but Janice has a whole lot to prove, not least of all to herself, and she never had no mama to teach her the value of playing nice. She never got taught that a kind, gentle smile opens more doors than a hundred growly scowls.

Mel smiles now. Kind and gentle. Her mama’s smile.

Janice scowls, lights a cigar, and spits out the window.

*

So here she is.

Middle of the night, middle of nowhere, with a companion who thinks it’s a smart idea to sleep with a gun two inches from her head.

Sometimes, Mel can’t help but question her life choices.

She hasn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in what feels like a lifetime. That’s not really the revolver’s fault, though it sure as heck doesn’t help. Mostly, it’s the fact that Janice makes more noise than a herd of elephants when she’s sleeping. She’s not what anyone would call a peaceful sleeper, on the rare occasion she turns off the lamp and sleeps at all, and frankly that’s just one more reason why the whole gun-under-the-pillow thing is an accident just waiting to happen.

She tosses and turns like a fish out of water, grinding her teeth and talking to herself, and even if Mel wasn’t at her wits’ end for fear of the darn revolver going off, the noise itself would be enough to drive a saint half-crazy.

Mel’s no saint, though, and lucky for them both she’s been half-crazy for half her life. There’s not much inside her head left to lose, but _Lord_ if Janice isn’t taking a good ol’ whack at it.

It’s kind of funny when she thinks about it. Truth be told, at this time of the night pretty much anything is kind of funny if she thinks about it hard enough, but with Janice… well. Mel’s learning to look for the funny side of everything she does. It’d drive her to some place worse than crazy if she didn’t, and Mel Pappas might be a lot of things, but a masochist has never been one of them.

The hard thing about Janice, though, is that she’s a walking contradiction. Come daylight, she’s a solid brick wall, closed off and darn near impossible to break through; Mel’s lucky to get more than a syllable or two out of her most days, and that’s only if she’s generous and counts the under-the-breath curses as coherent speech. She’s blocked off and untouchable when she’s awake, but as soon as she’s sleeping it’s like someone flipped on a switch and lit her right up. She’ll talk herself hoarse all night long, then com around in the morning with a sore throat wondering where the heck her voice has disappeared to. Mel’s seen it happen, but she’s never been brave enough to explain.

Naturally, Janice isn’t much more erudite in her sleep than she is when she’s awake. Mel doesn’t know too much about where she came from, but she knows enough to know that she wasn’t raised proper. Honestly, based on what little she does know, she’d be inclined to say the poor gal was barely raised at all; her daddy was a thief, always darting from one corner of the world to another in search of those darn scrolls, and her mama simply weren’t there at all. It’s a rough way to grow up, Mel imagines; small wonder her vocabulary’s as stunted as her posture.

She curses a lot. More than anyone Mel’s ever met, in fact. Words that would make a sailor blush, wrung out between gritted teeth or snarled like an animal, and that’s just when she’s awake. She’s a touch more polite when she’s sleeping, but it’s still not peaceful, and more times than she can count Mel’s given serious thought to leaning over and shaking her awake. Janice might be a stone in daylight, but when her dreams take hold they get her by the throat; some days it’s frightening, others it’s just sad. Either way, it’s a whole mess of pain to watch.

For all her good intentions, though, Mel isn’t brave enough to try and pull her out. A part of her doesn’t want to risk the rage she knows will come when Janice gets woken, but for the most part she’s just terrified of that darn revolver. It’s dangerous enough when Janice is twitching and thrashing and flailing around in her sleep; Mel really doesn’t want to think about what’d happen if she gets startled awake and doesn’t immediately recognise her.

She’s extra restless tonight. Watching her from the back of the truck, Mel kind of feels like she’s dancing with the devil. She doesn’t want to interfere with whatever unconscious struggles Janice is going through, and she definitely doesn’t want to wake her and risk a mouthful of curses and insults, but _goodness_ if she’s not scared half to death by the way she’s shaking and shuddering. Janice is strong as an ox and as stubborn as ten; she’s got her right hand under her head, fingers wrapped around the grip of the revolver, and her bicep is bunching with tension.

Mel _really_ doesn’t want to know what’ll happen if she makes a fist.

So, yeah. No choice but to make a move, right? No choice but to step in and try to save the poor woman from herself. Stupid, probably; dangerous, almost certainly. But it’s gotta be better than the alternative.

She’s not really sure what she’s going for, whether it’s the gun itself or Janice’s hand where she’s holding it, but either way she doesn’t get that far. She swings forward, body halfway between the back and the front seat, and stretches out her arm, but before she can make contact with anything, Janice shifts in her sleep and bolts upright. It’s a sudden spasm of a movement, a grunt and a snort and then all of a sudden, without so much as a word of warning, she’s staring at her blind-eyed with the gun in her hand.

Mel’s first instinct — understandably, she thinks — is to scream the place down. Frankly, the only thing that stops her is the fact that the barrel is pointed straight at her face.

“My goodness…” she hears herself squeak. Given the situation, it’s really something of an understatement. “Janice?”

Janice’s eyes are halfway open but they’re not seeing her at all. She’s still dreaming, Mel realises, but that’s forty-two flavours of not-at-all-comforting right now.

“No,” she mumbles, blind and breathless. “No, never again. _Never_ …”

“Um.” Mel blinks a few times, willing herself not to get breathless too. Her daddy taught her a lot about dealing with eccentric archaeologists, but somehow this never came up. “Okay, Janice. Sure. Whatever you say. Just put the gun down, and we can talk it out.”

She’s trying to keep her voice soft, her body loose and calm, as acquiescent and unintimidating as she can get with a gun pointed at her, but it’s hard to know how much it’s worth when she’s talking to someone who isn’t really seeing her. She wants to reach for the gun again, to get it out of Janice’s hand and toss it to the side before she hurts someone, but she doesn’t trust herself not to set the darn thing off herself. She’s not exactly trained in this sort of thing — truth be told, until she walked into that tent, she’d never even seen one go off before — and she definitely doesn’t want to make Janice any more upset than she clearly is. She probably doesn’t even realise what’s going on, but that’s not about to stop her doing something life-threatening if things boil over inside her head.

Mel keeps very still. Janice squints for about half a second — the longest-half-second in Mel’s whole life, she’s sure — then lets out a guttural groan and lurches forward.

It’s hard to know what she’s aiming for; from one angle it looks like she’s trying to take a swing at her, but then Mel shifts a little to dodge and she’s sure she sees both arms spread like she’s going for a hug. She doesn’t know what to make of it at all, but of course she doesn’t have the time to think about things like that when there’s a body lunging at her with a gun in its hand.

Luckily for Mel, Janice is sluggish, moving in that heavy, half-groggy way that sleeping people do when they’re not in control of themselves; it’s not too hard to duck out of the way, and Mel’s always been good at moving fast. Janice’s gun arm is raised now; Mel can’t tell what for, but frankly she doesn’t much care; it’s there and it’s visible, and she wrests the thing out of Janice’s hand as quick as a flash.

It surprises her, how easily she lets it go. No doubt she doesn’t even realise she’s holding it, but Mel’s used to awake-Janice, the woman who’d toss herself over a cliff before she’d let that darn thing out of her grip.

Janice swerves towards her again. For a second, Mel thinks she’s going after the gun, and she scrambles to stow it away someplace safe. Under the seat, out the window, she doesn’t care. Somewhere, _anywhere_ Janice can’t reach it.

Turns out she might as well have not bothered; whatever it is she was aiming at, Janice’s dream-fuelled energy burns itself out before she can do much of anything. She deflates like a balloon, eyes rolling all the way back in her head, and then she’s dropping like a fly, slumping slackly into Mel’s arms.

“ _Please_ …” she chokes. The word is all but suffocated by Mel’s shoulder, but it still makes her heart quicken; she’s never heard Janice say that word before. “Please… don’t ever…”

And just like that, it’s all over. She shudders once, curls her body flush against Mel’s, and starts to snore.

_Goodness,_ Mel thinks, and pats her awkwardly on the head.

Well, it’s not like she can do much else, is it? The revolver might be safe and sound and out of the way for the time being, but that doesn’t make her any less hesitant to make any sudden movements. The position is about as far from comfortable as anything she’s ever known — Janice is a dead weight, sprawled all over her like a worn-out puppy dog — but _Lord_ if Mel has never seen her get quite so still before. There’s a strange new expression on her face as she sleeps now, like whatever dream she was having has played itself out and left her almost restful.

Curled up in her arms like that, dead to the world and almost quiet, she looks almost peaceful. Well, as peaceful as anyone ever gets while snoring like a dang bulldozer, anyhow. She doesn’t get that way often — or, heck, ever — and Mel really doesn’t want to disturb her.

Heaven knows, they could both use a little peace.

*

Come morning, of course, the peace is shattered by a storm of curses.

There’s no way Janice doesn’t notice the fact that she’s changed position, or that the one she’s in is… well, less than ideal. Her lower half is mostly where it was when she fell asleep, stretched out neat and tidy in the front seat, but her upper half is sprawled out in Mel’s lap, face pressed against her chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like this is a perfectly normal sleeping arrangement, like they’ve discussed it and established that it’s not at all a complete invasion of personal space.

(If anyone bothered to ask her about it, Mel would point out, quite firmly, that that’s definitely _not_ the case. But then, when does Janice ever bother to ask her about anything?)

Point is, Janice has to notice that she’s been moving about in her sleep, even if she doesn’t immediately know how or why. Mel has slept in some pretty uncomfortable positions herself, and her own muscles twinge a little in sympathy at the sight of her straightening up and stretching. It’s maddening, the way she plays it all coy and stubborn, not saying a single word about the fact that she spent half the night waving her gun in Mel’s face and the other half snoring like a bear against her chest. Not a single gosh-darn word.

What she does say, between curses and seizing muscles, is “Christ, I need a real bed.”

Mel opens her mouth to point out the obvious, then thinks better of it and shakes her head instead. “And a hot bath,” she offers, wrinkling her nose. “Although I’m guessing we won’t be getting our hands on neither any time soon?”

Janice grunts, and lets that be answer enough. Mel doesn’t bother shooting for a clearer one; she knows better than to try getting a cohesive sentence out of Janice before she’s got a few shots of tobacco in her.

In a rare show of consideration, Janice actually steps outside the truck for her morning smoke. She doesn’t often do that, too wrapped up in her own ego and that _‘my truck, my rules’_ stuff of hers; occasionally she musters a flicker of thoughtfulness, though, and apparently today is one of those days. Mel doesn’t even get the chance to ask if that barbaric habit is really absolutely necessary; Janice is already slamming the door before she’s gotten a word out.

Mel steps outside too, albeit for very different reasons. Frankly she could do without Janice’s second-hand smoke — to say nothing of her sour morning mood — but they’ve been cooped up in that darn truck for what feels like decades and her legs are starting to complain. With the road stretching out as far as the horizon, and Janice infamous for going ruthlessly hard until one or both of them drops from exhaustion, Mel’s not about to pass up an opportunity to stretch herself out a little too.

“Not real scenic out here, is it?” she asks, in an inevitably futile bid at small talk.

Janice huffs, inhaling enough smoke that Mel would swear she can hear her lungs blackening right then and there. “We’re not here for the scenery,” she says, letting her breath and the smoke out real slow. “We’re here to work.”

“Well, now, I know that,” Mel shoots back, terse and stung. “You don’t gotta get all snippy about it. Just making conversation. Heaven knows, one of us should.”

“Uh huh.” Janice breathes in again, even deeper than before. Mel watches her wrist go limp, her eyes drifting shut in momentary bliss. The cigar goes loose between her fingers for a second, then jerks upright a beat or two later as her whole body goes tense. “Jesus, my neck is killing me.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Mel says automatically. “The night you had, it’s hardly surprising.”

Janice narrows her eyes. She’s not quite glaring, but it’s getting close. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?” She sucks down a long last drag, then stomps the cigar into the dirt. “You got a problem with the way I sleep now too?”

“No, ma’am.” It’s a statement, not an apology. She’s getting better at that. “Just saying you don’t exactly sleep restful, that’s all.”

Janice studies her long and hard for maybe a few seconds too long. It’s unnerving, is what it is. Mel doesn’t like to be the one who breaks eye-contact, but the way Janice stares from under the brim of that silly hat… well, it’d be enough to make even Xena quake in her boots, she has no doubt. There’s no-one who’d blame her for the way she blushes and looks down at her shoes, but Janice snorts again like it makes her weak not to make herself uncomfortable.

“Restful ain’t exactly a luxury you get out here,” Janice says, and when Mel finally looks up again she’s glaring down at her cigar stub like she’s starting to regret putting it out so fast. “You’ve gotta stay alert. Sleep with one eye open. You understand?”

“I’m sure I would,” Mel quips softly, “if you let me get any sleep at all.”

She flinches a little once she’s got the words out, like she’s bracing for something awful. The reaction comes to her automatically, without any kind of thought, and it’s a moment or two before she can put her finger on why. She sure as heck isn’t afraid of Janice, at least not often; it’s not exactly a secret that she’s all bite and no bark most of the time, and Mel’s better at reading her mood than most. It’s not that she expects a blow or a lecture or anything like that; it’s just that she can’t seem to shake off her memory of last night, the blind and broken look on Janice’s face and the steel of the revolver glinting in her hand. Mel isn’t the type of gal who gets thrown easily, at least not by someone like Janice, but goodness, that shook her up but good.

Janice is glaring at her again, like she does when she thinks Mel’s trying to get under her skin or undermine her somehow. She thinks that way pretty much all the time, whether she has any cause or not, and Mel’s more than used to that look by now. She doesn’t know why it’s making her uneasy now all of a sudden.

After a moment or two, Janice lets her shoulders relax just a little. “Jesus,” she grits out, for about the hundredth time this morning alone. “What’s the matter with you this morning? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or worse.”

_Close enough,_ Mel thinks, but she’s smart enough not to say so. “Just wish you wouldn’t keep that thing under your head when you’re sleeping,” she says, cocking her head at the revolver. It’s tucked away now, holstered at Janice’s hip like it always is in daylight, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. “You’re gonna do someone some real damage one of these days, and then where’ll you be?”

Janice shrugs. “You’d clean up after me,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Why else do you think I keep you around?”

Mel sighs. How in the world is she supposed to argue with that?

That’s the thing about Janice: she never looks at things through the right kind of lens. She’s either laughing off something really serious or taking some silly off-hand remark as a kind of personal affront, punishable by death or worse. Mel doesn’t know how to talk to someone like that, how to communicate proper with someone so unpredictable and irrational and always so gosh-darn _angry_. Every conversation is like poking at a beehive, and Mel has never been the kind of gal who’d put herself in harm’s way on purpose.

With anyone else, this whole discussion would be a no-brainer. _Don’t take your gosh-darn gun to bed with you_. Even a two-year-old would understand the logic at play there; it shouldn’t be as hard as it is to look a full-grown woman in the eye and tell her that it’s dangerous. _‘You had that thing pointed at my face,’_ Mel wants to say, _‘and you didn’t even know it was me’_ ; it’s true, and it’s simple, but Janice makes everything so darn difficult.

Then again, maybe that’s just Mel, stammering and out of her depth as she is out in the middle of nowhere with a woman who was born here; it’s hard to shake off the part of her that still feels like she shouldn’t be here at all, like she doesn’t deserve to be, that loud-mouthed corner of her brain that can’t help wondering if Janice was right to want to drop her onto the first plane back home. It’s hard to stand next to someone like Janice, so much larger than life even when she’s standing so short, and not feel like a waste of space.

Mel’s not really used to that feeling. She was never supposed to be the smart one in the family — she was supposed to be the pretty one, the quiet one — but things changed as they have a wont to do, and they all rolled with the punches. It weren’t no-one’s fault that Daddy’s genes were so much tougher than Mama’s, and Mel thanks the Lord every day that they understood when the thirst for knowledge hit her, that they fed and cultivated the parts of her that needed it most. Daddy wasn’t crude, nothing like what Janice is, but he cursed more than he should’ve, and never more than when he got himself all worked up and passionate about something.

_“To hell with them,”_ he said to her, not too long before he died. _“You do what makes you feel alive.”_

So here she is, doing exactly that, and it’s hard to reconcile the parts of her that are shaking in her shoes with the parts that feel alive out here. She’s not quite figured out what part of her that is, though, whether it’s really the scrolls that make her blood sing or whether it’s something else entirely. It’s Xena’s blood, she knows that much, but she can’t help wondering if maybe there’s something more to it than just that. Plenty of folks got big-name ancestors, and they don’t put their whole lives on hold to drive halfway across a foreign continent with a peevish half-pint in a hat. Plenty of folks got history running in their veins, and they don’t let themselves get bossed around the way Mel does, clamming up like the meek little girl her mama wanted every time Janice opens her mouth.

Gotta be more to it. More than just Xena. More than just the scrolls. More than history.

Heck if she can put her finger on the truth of it, though.

*

“You still sulking?” Janice asks, maybe three or four hours later.

She does that sort of thing all the time, twisting the simplest, most innocuous little thing into something silly and childish. She does it on purpose, Mel knows, to make herself look bigger, and it drives her almost to distraction. It doesn’t rightly matter why she’s gone quiet in any given moment, whether she has a legitimate reason to be upset or annoyed or whether she’s just feeling a little introspective for a change; so far as Janice is concerned, if she’s not talking her ear off that means she’s ‘sulking’.

It’s doubly ironic, Mel thinks, because Janice the one who really does sulk. Ask the woman a question she doesn’t totally approve of, or even look at her a certain way on a certain day, and she’ll be scowling at her boots for hours on hours, passive-aggressive muttering and all. She’ll scowl and mutter and play the sullen teenager right up until she drags an apology out of whoever — or, heck _what_ ever — has annoyed her.

Mel’s not like that. She doesn’t sulk, or at least she doesn’t do it like Janice does. She just thinks a lot sometimes, and gets lost inside her own head. Her brain runs a little too fast, faster than the rest of her, and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Especially when certain people have been thrashing and yowling in their sleep all night long. Now, call her any number of less-than-polite names, but she’ll be cursed thrice before she’ll let that be called ‘sulking’.

“Nah,” she says out loud, because who has the time or the patience to explain those nuances to Janice ‘head like a brick’ Covington? “Just thinking a spell, that’s all.”

Janice grunts. She doesn’t start muttering, but she does floor the accelerator, and the battered old truck gives a grinding shriek, body jolting as it strains to obey. Apparently people aren’t the only things she likes to push too hard.

“What could _you_ possibly be thinking about?” she asks, and doesn’t temper her voice at all.

No doubt she thinks she’s being cool about it, or else she doesn’t mean it the way it sounds, but still the tone makes Mel tighten up all over. Respect isn’t the kind of thing that comes easy to a gal like Janice, at least not when it comes down to sharing it with other people; she’s hauled herself up by her bootstraps, blaming everyone she can find along the way, and it’s not easy for her to look at someone like Mel, so much her opposite in every possible way, and see something worthwhile. She doesn’t really understand the notion of working well, only working hard.

Mel won’t put up with that kind of treatment for much longer. She’ll put up with it for now because Janice has that dog-tired look on her face, the one she gets sometimes after she’s had a really bad night and doesn’t want to admit she’s feeling it, the one that says she’s feeling rough all over and will be taking it out on anyone and anything that crosses her path for the next seven hours. It’s a real familiar look, the kind that comes with a few dozen cigar breaks and a few hundred curses, and Mel doesn’t want to have to fight it just to make herself hurt. She’s tired too, of course, and a darn sight more than Janice is, but the plain fact is that she’s not the one who’s got to keep her eyes open and fixed on the open road for the foreseeable future. Janice is the driver; that makes her well-being more important, at least for the time being.

“Wouldn’t wanna bore you,” Mel says, after a brief deliberation. It’s not much of a truth, but it’s close enough for right now. “Don’t you got your own troubles to worry about? No need to go fretting over mine too.”

“Wasn’t fretting,” Janice huffs. _And you have the gall to say I’m sulking,_ Mel thinks. “Was just… what’s that thing you say? ‘Making conversation’?” 

Mel can’t help herself; she splutters. “You?” she blurts out. “Making conversation? With me?”

Janice glares daggers at her. “Lemme guess,” she grumbles. “You’ve got a problem with that too? Wrong kind of chitchat for your delicate sensibilities or something?”

“Now, Janice,” Mel says with a sigh. “I’d appreciate you not putting words in my mouth. I never said nothing of the sort.”

“Uh huh.” Janice licks her lips a couple of times. They look pretty dry; Mel figures about ten minutes before the next smoke break. “Well, you’ve been like a goddamn wall all morning.”

“You’re always like that,” Mel points out. “How come it’s all right for you be quiet and such, and not for me?”

“I make it look good,” Janice answers simply. “You got something to say, why don’t you just spit it out already?”

Mel thinks about doing just that. She’s not real big on secrets, on letting things sit and fester until they hurt too much to think through, but _Lord_ if she doesn’t just freeze up completely when Janice is shifting in her seat and staring at her when she’s supposed to be staring at the road.

She wants to shrug it off, too, sake her head and say _‘it’s nothing’_ , repeat the lie enough times that it becomes its own kind of truth. She doesn’t want to give Janice any reason to lose what little is left of her her temper, but it’s more than just that. The sad fact is, for all the bad attitude and lousy treatment, she doesn’t want to disappoint her.

She settles, in the end, for a kind of in-between. “It’s nothing serious,” she says, slow and careful-like. “Just thinking about you.”

Janice snorts. It’s a weird sort of sound, like maybe some small part of her is flattered in spite of itself. She won’t ever let that sort of feeling show, though, and she shrouds it a second later in something much harder, something more like the tough adventurer Mel’s come to know and maybe almost love. It’s not the real Janice, she knows, but it’s the one she has to show off, the only one she really trusts herself to be. Even in front of Mel, apparently.

That makes her sad, more so than she’d care to admit. Even after all these weeks of sharing personal space and personal hygiene and all the rest of it. Still, Janice won’t let her see her soften, not even for a second. Not since Mel was Xena… or was that Xena who was Mel? Hard to tell, even with the benefit of hindsight, but either way Janice hasn’t looked at her the same since.

_All too easy to forget,_ Mel thinks sadly, though she knows she never will.

“Well,” Janice says, after a long, uncomfortable silence on both sides. She’s speaking slow too, Mel notes. “If it’s me you’re thinking about, you’re wasting your brain cells.”

“Now, I don’t think that’s—”

“It is.” Her voice is hard, her eyes harder, even under the brim of that silly, hole-riddled hat. “What you see is what you get. Ain’t you got that figured out by now?”

Mel shrugs one shoulder. They’ve not been together that long — a few weeks might feel like a decade out here on the road, but in the grand scheme of things it’s a drop in the ocean — and more often than not they’re working or driving. It’s hardly an ideal environment for figuring out much of anything, and least of all the great mystery of what makes Janice Covington tick. There’s not enough dig sites in all the world to uncover that one.

“Well, now, I don’t think that’s rightly true,” Mel says. “I reckon there’s a whole lot you don’t let no-one else see.”

She thinks again of last night, of the revolver pointed at her face, and tries not to shudder. Janice studies her a beat longer, then shrugs too and turns back to the road.

“Bullshit.”

It’s nothing of the sort, of course. Janice just has to fool herself into thinking she can make Mel believe it is. Well, if that’s what she needs, let her cling to it. Mel has more important things to worry about.

The words shape themselves like poetry inside her head, clear as crystal and lucid as Gabrielle’s beautifully-scrawled scrolls, the deeper feelings Mel can read between the lines she wrote down out all those centuries ago, the heart hidden beneath the text. Janice doesn’t see any of that because she’s so darn stubborn, because she’s a _historian_ , because she doesn’t like to be reminded of the fact that it’s Gabrielle, not Xena, who was her kin. Mel might be the warrior princess’s descendant but she’s the one with the poet’s heart, and she sees things in Gabrielle that Janice probably never will.

She’ll never admit just how much strength it takes to make her own words real, to breathe in deep and let them out with the air, the question she’s been wanting to ask all morning.

“What do you dream about?”

Janice goes corpse-stiff in her seat. “The hell kind of question is that?”

She’s angry. Really, properly angry. The truck jostles and jolts, rumbling precariously on the dirt road, despite the fact that there’s no potholes as far as the eye can see. Mel thinks about backing down, just dropping the whole issue, letting Janice have her way if that’ll get her focus back on the road. A shrug and a smile, a well-timed _‘just making conversation’_ , and she knows she’d buy it hook, line and sinker. She always does.

She could do that, sure, but she doesn’t. Not this time.

“You asked,” she says instead, quiet but bold. “You wanted to know what I was thinking. Well, there it is. You kick and buck like a bronco when you’re sleeping. And last night you…”

_You pointed your gun at my face. You came at me like you didn’t know whether you wanted to punch me or put your arms around me. You said “please”, for what was probably the first time in your whole darn life. I’ve never even seen you ask for something, and there you were begging like the world was about to end right in front of you. I’d give anything in the world to know what kind of terrible thing would make you feel that way._

Her courage quits her, though, before she can say any of that out loud. She gestures vaguely, and shakes her head, leaving the important part without a voice.

“Like a bronco,” Janice is muttering, a hollow echo of Mel’s own words; she’s clearly more annoyed than offended, and that suggests she has no idea of the rest. “You ever think that might be because I’m sleeping in a goddamned truck? You’d toss and turn too if you were stuck in the front seat.”

Mel doesn’t doubt that’s true. She’s a good head or two taller than Janice, even without heels, and she’s more than a little cramped even when she’s spread out in the back. Sleeping up front like Janice does would most likely be the death of her, and she might almost let that explanation sit if it weren’t for all that sleep-talking and violence that goes with it, and the fact that she’s on the receiving end of it all. Janice clearly wants to believe it’s all that simple, and maybe if she were feeling a mite more generous Mel might let her do just that, but it’s one thing to let a lie stand when it’s harmless, but it’s another thing entirely when it’s fast asleep and armed with a full-loaded revolver. 

“That’s as may be,” she says, slow and careful, like she always is when she pokes at the beehive. “But I don’t—”

“You’re overthinking it,” Janice interrupts. She’s talking a little too fast now, and driving a little too fast as well. “Dreaming up fanciful stories where there are none, just like you always do. You see someone who sleeps a little rougher than you, and you think there’s got to be be something going on underneath. Nightmares or some bad experience or something. But you’re wrong. Ain’t nothing in my head but those scrolls.”

For a second or two, she looks wistful, even a bit nostalgic. Mel might almost feel a little sorry for her, if she didn’t feel so gaslighted. _I know what I saw,_ she thinks, aggravated in spite of herself. _You think I can’t tell the difference between a bad dream and ‘the darn seat’s too small’?_

“Sure sounded like you had a lot in there last night,” she says, blurting it out as fast as she can before she loses her nerve again, before she can let Janice win by intimidation like she always does. “You were flailing and wailing like a darn banshee.”

Janice laughs. The sound is very rough, hoarse. She’s desperate for a smoke, Mel can tell, but she won’t give her the satisfaction of pulling over. “You sure _you_ weren’t the one dreaming?”

“Janice.” The name comes out much sharper than she intends, like she’s a schoolteacher rapping a ruler across Janice’s knuckles. She doesn’t mean to sound that way, but once it’s out she doesn’t bother to correct herself. “Don’t be such a—”

“What do you want me to say, Mel, huh?” Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the wheel, like someone really did strike them a blow. “I told you, you’re overthinking it. Can’t make it any clearer than that, can I?”

Mel sighs. “You want to keep your dreams private?” she asks, and thinks, _just like everything else._ “Is that it?”

“No.”

There’s hesitation in her voice, though, and when she turns in her chair, facing Mel again despite the road tearing past them at what feels like a hundred miles an hour, the tired circles under her eyes look darker now somehow. Funny, Mel thinks, how the only one of them who ever seems to get any sleep always looks fit to drop dead from exhaustion. She wants to take the question back, wants to apologise for bringing it up at all, but the curiosity is like a fire burning hot inside of her, and she’s learned too many times the cost of backing down when Janice feels the need to win.

“Look,” she says, softer but no less sober. “You don’t gotta make a big ol’ song and dance out of everything. If you want a little privacy…”

“You think that’s what I’m doing?” Janice asks. She sounds almost hurt now; Mel feels a strange pulse in her chest, like sympathy but sort of richer. “Making it all some big secret or something? Like I got nothing better to do with my time, than play coy about my sleeping habits?” She rolls her eyes, more aggravated than upset this time. “Believe me, Mel. I don’t dream anything worth hiding. If you’re so goddamn desperate to know, I…”

She trails off, swallowing real hard. Mel feels her breath hitch in her throat, her chest.

“Janice?” she manages, a question that feels like a thousand.

Janice swears under her breath. “Ah, hell,” she sighs. “Look. Fact is, I don’t dream much of anything at all.”

Mel bites down on a wry chuckle. “Now, come on…” she starts, but of course Janice doesn’t let her finish.

“You’re the one who asked,” she snaps. Her eyes are on the road again now, thank the Heavens, and she’s watching the horizon like a hawk. “Like it or not, there’s your answer. Believe me or don’t, that’s your damn call, but either way it’s the only one you’re gonna get.”

“I don’t—”

“ _Mel_.” Her voice cracks, splinters like glass. “Let it drop, okay? Just let the damn thing drop.”

Mel wants to shake her head, wants to push this until Janice backs down. She wants to straighten her spine and lock up her shoulders like Janice does when she’s getting mean about something, wants to be the tough gal for once. She wants to look her in the eye and say _‘who the heck do you think you’re fooling, Janice Covington?’_ , make her understand that she’s not the naïve little Southerner she sees. It feels like a kind of test, like a great big barrier between them, all the little ways Janice still doesn’t trust her, still doesn’t think she deserves to see her deepest places.

_If it were me,_ Mel thinks, _you bet your backside I’d be up-front with you. You bet your backside, I’d tell you every word, every little thought, everything in my darn head._ She wouldn’t even have to think about it; it’d just come as second nature, much like the way she opens up about everything else without so much as a thought. They’re supposed to be partners, aren’t they?

Well. They’re supposed to be _something_ , anyhow. Janice is real evasive about what exactly their relationship is, at least in as much as it relates to their work, and she doesn’t much like questions. Mel says _‘partner’_ and Janice lights a cigar and says _‘assistant’_ , all sharp teeth and hard eyes, like Mel won’t ever be worth more than being under someone else because she doesn’t have some fancy string of letters next to her name like Janice does, because she earned her skills in the comfort of her own home instead of the dust and the dirt of someone else’s dig site.

That’s not the way it really is, Mel knows, but she’s been raised to pick her battles carefully, and Janice Covington isn’t the kind of battle anyone should ever go into unprepared. Besides, Mel doesn’t much care if Janice looks down on her for not owning so many letters; at the very least, it’s a nice change taking it from another woman than from the boys’ club of most academic circles. Still, though, a part of her can’t help wanting more from this, from Janice, than she would from another would-be employer. Janice is a special sort, and it’ll take some time yet for Mel to figure out a way around her, to get between the chinks in her armour and work her way into the heart she knows is hiding somewhere underneath.

But hey, that’s okay. They’ve got all the time in the world out here. Janice might be doing her best to make Mel run away with her tail between her legs, but Daddy didn’t raise no quitter, and Mama would kick her behind all the way back to South Carolina if she even dreamed of backing down when she’s finally found a place where she feels alive. Mel Pappas has never walked out on anything in her whole darn life, and she’s sure as heck not about to start now.

Come what may, she’ll get there. And come Hell or high water, she’ll drag Janice down with her.

“All right,” she says out loud, rather more to herself than to Janice. “If that’s the way you want it, that’s just fine with me.”

“Great,” Janice mutters. She’s always muttering, Mel notes sadly. Even when she’s not in a particularly bad mood, rare though those moments are, she’s always pitching her voice real low, always gritting or grating or biting the words out between clenched teeth. Always on her guard, even when there’s no danger. “Now we’ve got the big questions out of the way, do you think we can get back to work?”

Mel sighs. It’s not surrender, she tells herself; she’s just picking her battles. “Sure, Janice,” she says. “Whatever you say.”

Janice, of course, doesn’t even acknowledge. She’s probably already moved right on, no doubt forgotten that the conversation ever happened. That’s so like her, Mel thinks; she’s always so locked up in her own little world that she fails to notice the things and people coming and going all around her. On someone else, someone more personable, it might almost be endearing, a kind of sweet scatter-brained smartness, but Janice could make even the sweetest sentiment into something sour. She’s not an easy person to be around, that’s for sure, and isn’t it just a blessing for the both of them that Mel’s just enough of a cock-eyed optimist to see only the good in that.

Funny, how the feeling creeps up on her. She should be mad about this, the bravado and the blocking and all the rest of it, but she’s not.

Janice is staring at the road ahead again, tuning Mel out completely, and it’s by pure instinct that Mel finds herself following the line of her her gaze, searching out the things she knows Janice sees out in that big ol’ wasteland. It’s a long way to their next dig site, the road stretching out endlessly ahead of them, and a longer way to any kind of civilisation. There’s nothing in any direction for a thousand miles, but Mel doesn’t need to turn and look at Janice to feel the excitement burning hot all through her. It’s not just a big ol’ wasteland, not to her. It’s a great big world full of possibility and promise, and Mel has never seen anything more beautiful than the way that feeling lights up Janice’s face.

Sleepless nights or no, she thinks, that’s something worth sticking around for.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

She puts her foot down that night, for the very first time.

Not the first time in her life, mind. Just the first time in front of Janice. Which… well, close enough, really. They’ve been working and travelling together a good few weeks now, and in that time Mel’s felt her not-at-all-modest vocabulary slowly but surely shrinking down to mindless variations of _‘yes, ma’am’_ and _‘no, ma’am’_. It’s not that she’s a pushover; it’s just that she’s often found arguing is more trouble than it’s worth, and that goes double with a companion like Janice Covington.

Mel likes things simple. She hates making a fuss, even when she’s got a good reason, and she firmly believes there’s more important things in life than being right all the time. Janice would pick out any old hill she could find and carve out her grave on it; Mel, meanwhile, prefers to keep her mouth shut until she finds something that really matters. It’s one of the best things her daddy taught her, next to the linguistical stuff: _“Keep your head down and your nose clean. Be as obedient and well-behaved as you can. That way, when you got something worth saying folks will sit down, shut up, and listen.”_

It works, to her surprise, on Janice too. She sits up real straight when Mel summons the strength to look her in the eye, gawking like she’s never seen her before. The sight of her so thrown makes Mel feel kind of powerful, like something strange and new has lit up in her blood. It’s not a million miles away from how she felt when she was Xena, when Xena was her, when for just a few minutes she and the warrior princess were one and the same. The heat of it covers her completely, makes her feel unstoppable.

“No more,” she says, reaching for the gun. It’s not a suggestion. “You hear me, Janice? No more.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Her eyebrows are all the way up, and she’s real quick to yank the gun out of reach, but even with her big talk and big gestures she’s still not dismissing Mel out of hand. Given their history, that’s a victory in itself. “Haven’t we discussed this already? I told you—”

“I know what you done told me,” Mel says. This is a kind of first too; she’s never interrupted Janice mid-sentence before. “But it won’t stand, Janice. Not after last night.” She holds that thought for a second or two, watches Janice’s face like it’s the most important thing in the world, growing bolder when she doesn’t fight back. “I’m not gonna be fearing for my life again, you hear?”

Janice rolls her eyes, but she’s still not yelling. “You’re being dramatic,” she says instead, in a low ground-out grumble.

“Like heck I am.” She takes a deep breath, steadies her voice and her hands. “Janice, you don’t… you’re not in control of yourself when you sleep. You don’t got the first idea what kind of things you do and say, what kind of danger you put decent folks in.”

“Decent folks,” Janice echoes. “You mean _you_.”

“Why, I do indeed. So you can just find some other way to protect yourself at night. Something that don’t put my life at risk, or yours neither.”

Janice glares, tightening her grip on the revolver. “I told you before,” she says. “Sleep on the damn road if it bothers you so damn much. I know what I’m doing.”

Mel shakes her head, somber and very serious. “No,” she says. “I don’t rightly think you do.”

She expects Janice to get real mad at that, furious in that way she often gets when she thinks Mel’s trying to undermine her, when she thinks her pride’s on the line or something silly like that, but it doesn’t happen. Janice doesn’t get mad, doesn’t even get upset, really; she just sighs real low, like she should’ve known better than to expect some Southern dame to understand her way of thinking.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the trusting one?” she asks, like there’s not a bit of difference between faith and firearms. “Why can’t you trust me on this?”

 _Because I’ve seen you when you’re asleep,_ Mel thinks. _I’ve seen how you get when you’re dreaming. Don’t much matter that you think it don’t happen. I’ve seen it, and I know it does._

She doesn’t say it, though, and it’s not because she doesn’t have the courage. Janice is looking at her like she really wants an answer, like this is about something more than posing and posturing, something more than trying to push her buttons.

Well, that’s to be expected. Trust is a funny thing, and Janice gets real funny too when she talks about it. She doesn’t really know what it feels like, and Mel supposes that she’s no more used to receiving it than she is giving it. She’s probably never had anyone stick around long enough to look through that tough-as-nails veneer, the bullets and the bad attitude and all the rest of it; she probably never knew no-one but her daddy who ever stopped to think there might be something a little softer underneath. She wants Mel to trust her about the stupid revolver, not because it would make her right but because it’d mean that maybe, just maybe she really is worth trusting after all.

Thinking about it that way makes Mel ache inside. How sad it must be, and how lonely, to live in a world where trust and compassion are such rare gems.

“It’s not about trusting you,” she says quietly; she doubts it’ll be much help, but she has to soften the blow somehow. “It’s about you being unconscious with a loaded weapon two inches from your head.” She sighs. She doesn’t really want to bring this up again, but if that’s what it takes to keep them both safe she won’t shy away from it. “Janice, you listen to me, and you listen real good: you don’t sleep _safe_. Not for yourself, not for me, not…” She sighs. “You even remember pointing that thing at my head last night?”

Janice flinches real hard. “I’d never do that,” she says, but Mel would swear she’s gone a little pale.

“You did,” Mel tells her; she lets her eyes burn hot for a second, then softens. “Look. I get that you wanna protect yourself. Heaven only knows why it’s so dang important, but that’s your business. Maybe something happened that made you paranoid, or maybe it’s just something you always done.” Most likely it’s the latter, just one more bad habit her daddy bred in her, not unlike those ridiculous cigars. “Don’t much matter the reason. Point is, I understand.”

“Do you?” For just a fraction of a second she sounds almost hopeful.

“Yeah, I reckon I do.” She sighs. “But that’s neither here nor there. You’re being reckless, Janice. Heck, you’re being downright _dangerous_. Now, maybe that sort of thing was fine and dandy when it was just you out here all on your lonesome, but you’re sleeping for the two of us now, and it’s not gonna stand no more. You gotta… for once in your life, you gotta think about more than just yourself.”

Janice lets out a yell. It’s the first time she’s shown real rage since the conversation started, and _Lord_ if it doesn’t make Mel quake in her shoes.

“You think I don’t know that?” The words are quaking too, but the weakness pinned down by violence and hurt. “What the hell do you think I’m doing with this thing, huh?” She waves the revolver in Mel’s face, not as a threat but to underline her point. “Ain’t just about me now, is it? I’m not just taking care of myself any more. Jesus Christ, Mel, don’t you get that it’s for you too?”

“If it is, I don’t want it,” Mel tells her flatly. She tries to smile, to show her strength, but her mouth won’t move. “Don’t let these big ol’ heels fool you none. I can take care of myself just fine.”

Janice shakes her head. She’s definitely pale now, and there’s a desperation in her eyes that cuts through the anger. “It’s different,” she says, surprisingly softly. “I don’t know if you noticed between all that whining of yours, but my life ain’t exactly safe right now, and you just walked right into the middle of it. You’re my…” She cuts herself off, shakes her head like she’s startled herself with whatever she was about to say. “You’re with me now, Mel.”

“Well, now, don’t you think I know that?”

“I don’t think you know what it _means_.” She’s trying to be patient, Mel can see, but patience is not an easy fit for her. “It means sticking it out through all the bad stuff that follows me around. It means getting shot at, getting threatened, getting the life beaten out of you for someone else’s mistakes. It means going to Hell and back again so many times you know the route by heart. And I’ll… I’ll be damned if I let any of that stuff get anywhere near you. Do you understand? I’ll take every one of those bastards down with me before I let them touch you.”

 _Oh,_ Mel thinks, struck silent for the first time.

All of a sudden, all that posturing and swaggering makes a whole lot more sense. The whip at her hip, the gun in her hand, the broad hat and blue language all adds up to a whole lot more than Mel first thought. All of a sudden, she feels almost guilty for saying anything at all. Janice is right, at least in part: Mel hasn’t really thought much about her place in Janice’s life and what it might mean for them both. She’s never stopped to wonder if maybe it’s her fault Janice is clinging to her darn revolver, like maybe she’s not just sleeping for the two of them but fighting too.

Well, she thinks, straightening her shoulders. That sort of thinking won’t stand neither. She gets enough of that ‘fragile flower’ nonsense from the folks back home, and she’s not about to take it from Janice too.

“I told you,” she says, soft but very serious. “You don’t gotta worry about me. You think I couldn’t handle that thing myself, given the chance?”

Well, okay, truth be told she probably couldn’t. Daddy taught her a lot of things, some useful and some not so much, but he never taught her which end of a revolver is the dangerous one. Not that Janice needs to know that, of course.

“You’re kidding,” she blurts out, but it’s real different from how she said it before. She’s not mocking, Mel can tell, just trying to figure her out. “You really expect me to believe you could keep the both of us safe if someone came after us out here?”

Mel sees the chance, grabs at it with both hands. It’s hard to smile with the gun filling all the space between them, but she manages it by pure force of will because she knows that self-confidence is what Janice responds to best.

“Well, now,” she says, as coy as she can get. “You’ll never know if you don’t give me the chance, will you?”

It’s a far cry from how she pictured this conversation going down, and a further one from how she wanted it to. She was hoping to talk Janice around, make her see some kind of sense, and she expected… well, truth be told, she more than halfway expected to just give up the ghost and sleep on the roadside like Janice told her to. Spending the night with the silly gun under her own pillow sure as heck wasn’t part of the plan, but looking at the alternative it sure beats sleeping outside. Better, too, she thinks, than finding the thing shoved in her face again by an oblivious, unconscious Janice who’ll deny it all to high Heaven come tomorrow.

Unsurprisingly, Janice is staring at her now like Mel just asked her to hand over her firstborn child. She’s more than a little attached to her arsenal, and if Mel hadn’t been on the receiving end of the gun only just last night, she might almost think it kind of cute, how over-protective she is.

There’s nothing funny about this, though, so instead of laughing she holds her ground and keeps her expression very serious. _C’mon, Doctor,_ she thinks. _Let’s see what you’re made of._

After a long, uneasy silence, Janice finally leans back a little in her seat. “You’d have to stay alert,” she says, speaking slow and steady. “I mean really, _really_ alert. You understand? No napping on the job.”

Mel chuckles to herself. _Guess it’s ‘do what I say, not what I do’,_ she thinks, though of course that’s nothing new.

“Yes, ma’am,” she says. “Don’t rightly get much sleep anyhow, the way you carry on all night.”

“I don’t ‘carry on’,” Janice snaps. “You’re just too sensitive about it.”

Mel gives her a hard look. Well, as close to one as she ever manages in the face of Janice’s scowling, which frankly isn’t all that much. She’s an amateur even at the best of times at the fine art of intimidation, and Janice — who could make a Rottweiler roll over and beg without breaking a sweat — makes it all the more of a challenge. At least the folks back home would humour her once in a while; Janice just acts like she wants to chew her head off just for having the gall to be anything other than meek and compliant.

“Be that as it may…” Her voice stays sharp easier than her face, she finds. “If living with you is as dangerous as you seem to think it is, don’t you think I ought to take a shot at it once in a while? Can’t be hiding behind you forever, you know.”

Janice huffs. Mel thinks it might be a laugh, but it’s hard to tell. “Guess I don’t make for the best cover, do I?”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.” She would, actually, if she didn’t think it’d make Janice mad again, and risk ruining what meagre progress she’s almost made. “I’m just a mite taller than your average damsel in distress.”

That does it. She doesn’t expect it to, but Janice lets out a furious, frustrated shout and tosses the revolver at her.

“Fine,” she snarls, lips curling in a threat. “If it means that goddamn much to you… hell, if it’ll get you to shut up about it for five seconds, go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

Mel catches the thing awkwardly, thrown off-balance more by the gesture itself than the throw. _Guess the height thing’s a sensitive issue,_ she thinks, and definitely doesn’t smile.

“Why, thank you,” she manages, and hopes it sounds humble enough. “Appreciate the opportunity.”

“Sure you do.” Janice looks like a sullen teenager, pouting and empty handed and just about ready to spit. “Just be careful with her, okay? She’s a particular kind of lady.”

Mel doesn’t remark on her odd choice of pronoun. “Well, then,” she says. “I reckon that makes me pretty well equipped to deal with her. Deal with you well enough most days, don’t you think?”

“Jury’s still out on that,” Janice mutters, scowling like a storm.

She means it as a slight, Mel knows, but that doesn’t stop her grinning like a loon. She’s no fool; she knows that this is about more than the silly revolver, more than Janice handing over one of her toys to someone she still thinks is beneath her. Heck, it’s probably about more than giving Mel a chance to defend herself for once.

There’s something new on display here, a kind of shared compassion — heck, a kind of _trust_ — that Janice doesn’t let out very often, if at all. She’s real vocal about that, the not-trusting part, and Mel has always kind of assumed that anything like friendship between them would have to come from her side alone. A week, or even a couple of days ago, this would’ve been beyond her wildest imagination.

Janice doesn’t yield anything. Not an inch, not a word, and above all not a single part of herself. Back at the last dig site, Mel had to sleep outside the tent for two whole nights because she had the audacity to suggest the dig might be a dead end. It didn’t much matter that she had the right of it, that there really was nothing there in the end. What mattered was that she dared to say something Janice didn’t want to hear; what mattered was that she dared to suggest she give up.

This is such a huge step up from that. Janice isn’t admitting that she might be wrong, not even close, but she’s giving up something that matters to her, something she cares about. She’s not just handing over her precious revolver; she’s putting a kind of faith in Mel to do right by it, and to do right by her too. She’s trusting her to protect the two of them, sure, but more than that she’s trusting her to take care of the darn thing. And though she’ll never say it out loud, though Mel knows she won’t ever back down on that _‘I don’t dream’_ nonsense of hers, maybe a part of her is conceding the fact that she’s not safe when she’s out cold and thrashing around like a beached whale.

Mel’s hands aren’t super big, but still somehow the revolver feels fragile and small when she cradles it. Funny, she thinks, how something so small can be so deadly. She runs her thumb across the cylinder, thinks of the bullets hidden inside, small but dangerous, tiny sharp teeth just waiting for a weak spot to tear into. _Not so different from Janice_ , she thinks, and wonders why that makes her feel sad instead of scared.

“I’ll take good care of her,” she says at last.

It’s a promise to the both of them, the revolver and its owner, but of course Janice doesn’t see the metaphor at all.

“You’d better,” she says, and makes a fist with her empty hand.

*

The night is no more restful for either one of them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Mel doesn’t exactly trust herself with the revolver any more than Janice does. She keeps it at arm’s length, as far away from her body as possible while still being in reach, and the only reason she doesn’t just toss it out onto the roadside is that she knows Janice would skin her hide for even thinking about it. She loves that gun almost as much as she loves the truck, and she loves both of those things a whole lot more than she loves the too-tall tag-along sprawled out in the back. Go figure, Mel thinks wearily, that she would fall in with a woman who loves metal more than people.

Janice sleeps badly again. Maybe in some subconscious part of her she’s feeling unsafe, antsy for want of the weapon, or else maybe that’s just the way it’s gotta be for her right now, silent struggles for silent reasons. Either way, it spills out tonight just like it did last night; she’s barely been out a minute before she starts tossing and turning again, and it doesn’t take someone as familiar with this as Mel is to know that it’s only a matter of time before the twitching turns to thrashing, before the under-the-breath mumbling evolves into something louder, something weighted and painful.

It’s the same old story all over again, but the context makes it feel real different. Janice is a mess, all flailing limbs and words that don’t make sense, but it’s Mel who feels the shift.

With the gun at a safe distance, she finds that it’s easier to dig down and find her compassion, to worry about Janice instead of her own hide. It’s easier to think about what she’s feeling instead of what might happen if she doesn’t settle down, to care about the person behind the thrashing and the gritted-out half-sentences. It’s a different kind of unease that twists inside her now, an echo of that odd little flutter she felt last night when Janice fell into her arms,the awe that bubbled up inside her when she heard that word — _‘please’_ — and the way it boiled over into flat-out fondness when it was over and Janice was so still and peaceful.

Mel isn’t much of a nurturer, at least not compared to the folks back home, but she’s a whole lot closer to it than Janice. She knows that Janice would kill her for thinking the things she’s thinking now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to shoo those thoughts away. Janice is never helpless, not even when she’s like this, but the anguish ripping through her is like a punch to the gut, and yeah, it _hurts_. It’s a torture to look at her when she’s like this, and a far worse one to sit quietly by and not try to help.

That’s the other thing about having the gun here with her and not over there with Janice: it makes it real easy to heed those nurturing instincts, to let them win out when they rise up with the need to do something. The last time this happened, Mel was too worried about the revolver to do much of anything; the threat was always there that Janice would flail just a little too hard and blast one or both of them to smithereens. Mel never got to give much thought to things like compassion and caring, and she sure as heck never had the courage to lean over and try to calm her. That darn revolver was always right there at the front of her mind; she was always so aware of the damage it could do if things went bad. Now, though, knowing that it’s safely out of the way, it’s darn near impossible to keep her distance.

“I don’t care,” Janice is shouting, grief rending the air like its own kind of weapon. She finds the edge of the seat with her fists and clings on desperately. “I don’t _care_!”

Her jaw’s trembling again, like it did last night. Not how she was with the gun in her hand, blind and blank, but how she was after, when Mel prised the silly thing out of her hand and Janice fell headlong into her lap. She wasn’t angry then; she was broken, whimpering and pleading. Mel can still hear it in her head, the way her voice went up, the way she said _‘please’_ for what had to be the first time in her whole darn life. She’s like that now too, unarmed and all but helpless, and _Lord_ if it doesn’t make Mel’s heart bleed for her. She doesn’t really know where the urge comes from, but all of a sudden she wants nothing in the world more than to hold her close and never let go.

She leans in as close as she can, until her breath catches in Janice’s hair, and whispers, “It’s okay.”

The words come easy, and Janice groans. “I don’t…” she manages again, then throws her head back like she’s trying to fight off something so much bigger than her. “I…”

Mel steadies her, one hand on her arm, the other framing her face.

“I know,” she says. “You don’t care. I done heard you the first time.” She tries to smile, though she knows Janice won’t see it, and catches her breath; she doesn’t know what or who Janice supposedly doesn’t care about, but she figures it doesn’t much matter. Dreams can be terrible things, she knows, but they’re not real. “Honestly, Janice, I don’t reckon there’s a soul on this earth who’d expect you to. Least, no-one who ever met you. And that’s… well, it’s okay. You don’t gotta care if you don’t want to. I’ll still stick around.”

She knows there’s no way Janice can hear that, much less understand what she’s saying, but she sure reacts as though she did. She’s getting quieter now, softening breath by breath, as though healed somehow by the sound of Mel’s voice, touched by the words she can’t possibly have heard.

She’s still fidgeting a little, and there’s a horrible, heartbroken look on her face, but she’s not yowling any more, and her mumbled pleas are not nearly so desperate. It’s as close to steady as Mel can really hope for, and she knows that she should take advantage of that, roll over and try to get a few winks of sleep in the minute or two before Janice kicks off again, but she doesn’t. Despite herself, despite her perpetual exhaustion, she can’t seem to tear her eyes off the poor woman’s face.

“It’s okay,” she says again, though she knows Janice would throttle her for it. “Whatever it is that’s got you like this, we’ll work through it together. You hear me? _Together_.”

Janice shudders, whimpering a little against the seat, and then her whole body relaxes. 

It’s the darndest thing. Mel hasn’t really touched her, hasn’t done anything in particular; all she’s done is talk to her a little, but still somehow it reaches her, calming her in a way it never would if they were in daylight and she was awake. Conscious, Janice would never let Mel get away with saying this; asleep, she seems to take real comfort from it.

Looking at her, watching her chest rise and fall as she starts to relax, Mel feels so valued, so precious. It’s like every breath in Janice’s body is locked in on her, like it’s somehow enough that she’s here. Mel has never been worth that much to anyone before, and she never expected to be worth it to Janice.

Overcome, she reaches for her. As careful as she can, tentative and tender and so light, she finds Janice’s face with her fingertips.

“You remember what you said?” she whispers. “ _You’re with me now_. Well, that goes both ways, you hear? You’re with me now, too. We’re with each other.”

Janice turns her head, and Mel feels the muscles in her jaw go tight against her palm. “Don’t,” she whimpers. “ _Please_.”

Mel’s heart just about stops in her chest. She’s never heard anyone sound so hopeless or so helpless in her whole darn life; she’s sure as heck never heard Janice sound that way. She’s desperate again, even through the stillness, willing to beg or plead or do anything in the world to stop whatever it is she’s going through. Mel would do anything too, to wash those words out of Janice’s head, to make it so she never, ever has to feel that way again.

It’s the strangest, most horrible feeling. Janice is always so tough, so much larger than life when she’s awake; she could take out an army without breaking a sweat, Mel’s certain of that, but when she’s like this, all helpless and broken… _Lord_ , Mel would swear blind that she was fresh out of the cradle, swaddled up safe and sound in her daddy’s arms.

“Hush now,” she hums, like she would if she really was dealing with a babe-in-arms. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, you hear? You’re not getting rid of me.”

She knows Janice isn’t talking to her or about her or anything of the sort. She knows that she’s probably not even aware that she’s there. She’s no fool; she knows what dreaming does to a person.  Still, though, it feels so darn important to say it, to put the words out there. Janice is a grown woman, not a babe in need of swaddling, but Mel can’t help wanting to wrap her up in something warm, not just for her sake but for herself as well.

Mel knows her own weaknesses, and her strengths. She might be meek and quiet when the moment calls for it, but that’s not the same as being helpless. She might never be able to convince awake-Janice that she can take care of herself out here in the big wide everywhere, but dreaming-Janice is a whole different kettle of fish. She might not be listening, might not hear her at all, but at least she’s not shooting her that _‘shut up’_ glare of hers. At least she gets quiet when Mel talks. This Janice doesn’t push her away; she actually takes comfort in keeping her close. That’s more than Mel will ever hope to get out of the other Janice, the one she has to live and work with.

 _Lord,_ she thinks. _The things I’d do for you if you’d let me._

Janice whines again, as though she’s hearing that too. She shakes, another choked-off plea trembling on her tongue, and then she’s rolling over completely, head dropping back down onto the seat as though she never moved at all.

Mel takes back her hand as Janice rolls away. She can’t make out the lines on her fingers under the thin, cloud-drenched moon, but when she touches them to her lips she finds them sticky with salt.

She doesn’t need to look at Janice’s face to see where it came from.

*

In the morning, Janice squints up from under the brim of her hat and says, “Were you tempted?”

Mel blinks a few times, and then a few more. They’re stood side-by-side next to the truck, Janice sucking on her first cigar of the morning while Mel rummages through their baggage for something that vaguely resembles breakfast; it’s an innocuous enough start to the day, but for the fact that it’s before mid-afternoon and Janice was the one to start a conversation. Not counting her usual stream of curses and blasphemy — and Mel’s long since given up on counting that as civilised speech — she seldom says so much as a word before the sun’s already on its way down.

It takes Mel a second to recover from the shock of hearing actual cohesive dialogue this early in the day, and when she does all she gets out is “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” Janice rolls her eyes real dramatic-like. “You must’ve thought about it, right? Pulling the trigger just to shut me up. What with the way I ‘carry on’, or whatever it is you said. Must’ve been at least a little bit tempting, right?” Her teeth flash as she spits. “So how much?”

“Not a bit,” Mel says. She has no idea where this unexpected chattiness is coming from, but she’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth by questioning it. “It’d take more than a few sleepless nights to make me do something like that.”

Janice snorts. “Guess I’d better try harder then.”

It’s hard to tell whether she’s joking or not, and Mel’s not inclined to ask. She doesn’t want to rock the boat, doesn’t want to risk making Janice feel even the tiniest little bit self-conscious about being the one to strike up a conversation. It feels like something much bigger than it should be, something delicate and fragile, like a voyage out into uncharted seas, and the last thing in the world Mel wants is to make her regret having made the effort.

So, instead, she opts not to mention it at all. She manages a polite little laugh and blurts out, apropos of nothing, “Don’t suppose there’s a diner any place round here?”

She means it more as an attempt to restore the status quo than anything super-serious, but it still makes Janice suck in her breath, biting off a growl like she just went and asked for the Taj Mahal or something.

“Don’t tell me we’re out of food…” she mutters, sighing like it’s inevitable. “We had plenty just last night.”

“Now, I wouldn’t say ‘out’, exactly,” Mel mumbles, already regretting this. “It’s just… well, good grief, Janice, we’ve been running on a diet of beef jerky and graham crackers almost as long as I can remember. It’s not _food_.”

“It’s food enough to keep us going,” Janice tells her, a little too defensive. “The hell kind of gourmet crap were you expecting out here? We ain’t in South Carolina any more.”

Mel swallows a sigh. Apparently the gentle teasing is over; already, Janice’s expression is darkening, her eyes along with it. A shame, truly; Mel was aiming for the exact opposite of this.

“Well, now, I’m sure I don’t mean nothing by it,” she says hastily. “That stuff’s served us real well up till now, and I’m not judging your taste none. But you can’t pretend like you don’t miss proper food too. I heard your belly growling like a bear last night…”

“You’re imagining things again,” Janice says with a pointed _‘don’t push me’_ look.

It’s different, though, the way she’s glaring now and the way she did it yesterday when Mel started asking about her dreams. This is easy, or at least as close to it as a gal like Janice is ever likely to get; she’s still scowling, sure, but it’s the kind of scowl a kid would gets when she knows she’s got caught doing something she shouldn’t. Sullen, yeah, but just a touch guilty too. Janice wouldn’t admit it in a million years, the missing-proper-food thing, but she can’t rightly deny it either, not when her body’s giving her away; she knows it’s true as well as Mel does. It’s an in-between look, the one she’s wearing right now, like _‘well, you may be right, but I’ll be damned before I admit it’_. Mel’s seen that look about a thousand times by now and she knows it real good.

The look on Janice’s face yesterday was very, very different. Seeing her now, back to whatever passes for normal, Mel realises for maybe the first time just how different the whole atmosphere was back then, how tense and how wrong. Janice is as full up on scowls and snarls now as ever, but she’s toothless too, and they both know there’s no real threat in it. She’s just talking the only way she knows how, the way she always does, and she don’t mean nothing special by it. There’s no pressure here, nothing that weighs on either one of them. It’s a debate about food, for goodness’ sake, and for all the weight Janice wants to pretend it carries, they both know it doesn’t really matter in the end.

Yesterday, though… well, whatever the reason, that one did matter. Mel’s only just realising it now, but yeah, Janice was really, really serious then.

All of a sudden she wants to apologise for pushing her, for trying too hard, for not seeing that it was a place she wasn’t welcome. Thinking back on last night, the salt sticking to her skin where she touched Janice’s face, the way Janice seemed to calm down from just the sound of a familiar voice, the way her jaw and her knuckles went white, the anguish in her when she started to beg, the depth of all those emotions Mel still doesn’t really understand… all of sudden, it all resonates very deeply. Mel feels overwhelmed by the need to say she’s sorry for prying, sorry for asking questions, sorry for making Janice feel like she owed that part of herself to anyone, least of all her.

She doesn’t apologise, though. What good would it do, dredging that stuff back up again, when Janice clearly has no idea of the tears that painted her cheeks last night?

Maybe there was some truth to her bluster, after all. Heck, maybe she just thinks there is. Either way, it clearly meant a whole lot more to her than Mel thought it did at the time.

It’s a learning process, figuring out this sort of thing, finding the lines she’s not supposed to cross and slamming on the brakes before she careens over them. Every conversation they have, every look they share, it’s a lesson in what not to do and where not to push. Janice Covington is like a great big jigsaw puzzle, all scrambled up in bits and pieces, and Mel is pretty sure that even she herself don’t rightly know what the big picture’s supposed to look like. It’s hard, learning how to deal with someone like that, and harder still learning how to communicate without hurting either one of them.

She is learning, though. That’s the important part, isn’t it? Hard though it is, she’s getting there. Day by day, conversation by conversation. And maybe there’s a part of Janice that’s learning a little too, not that she’d ever admit to such a thing; maybe in some little corner of herself she’s slowly starting to see that Mel really is on her side, that they really are in this thing together. It’d make sense, Mel figures, because while she’s still not exactly compromising, she’s a whole lot closer to it now than she has been in weeks. It feels like progress, even if it is only the _‘one step forward, two steps back’_ kind; at the very least, it feels like maybe this is more than just some convenient professional situation.

Seeming to sense the threat of letting this become a _moment_ , Janice reels away. She stubs out her cigar on the ground, ignoring Mel’s disapproving _‘tsk’_ like she always does, and starts rummaging around under the front seat of the truck.

She’s making a real show of it, muttering and complaining under her breath like she’s real put out or something, and Mel can tell that she’s being baited, that Janice is making a grand old show for her sake, but still she can’t keep from rising to it just the same. Heaven preserve her, she’s weak in the face of Janice’s eyes when she gets all sort-of playful like this, when she’s trying to get a rise for no reason at all. She thinks she’s being so subtle, so darn coy, but a blind bear could see what she wants, and _Lord_ if Mel can’t resist giving it to her.

“What in tarnation are you doing now?” she asks, surrendering with a sigh.

Janice’s broad shoulders give a triumphant little twitch, then go slack. It’s the only reaction she’ll ever let show, and Mel marvels at how different it is on her than it would be on someone more companionable.

On a normal person, a slump like that would mean defeat, maybe even disappointment. On Janice, though, much like everything else, it’s a whole new language. She’s always knotted up so tight, shoulders and arms always locked like weapons, like she’s always waiting for something terrible to happen, always bracing for an blow that never comes. The rare moments when her shoulders go slack like this, when her arms hang loose at her sides and her body loosens up… it doesn’t read like disappointment on her. Mel might not read bodies as well as she reads text, but even she can make out that Janice is calm, that impossible as it seems she might even be _happy_.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Janice asks. She finds what she’s looking for, a moth-eaten old map, and spreads it out across the hood of the truck. “I don’t plan on spending another day listening to you sulk and whine like a hungry three-year-old. I figure if I can get you some half-decent grub and that bath of yours, maybe I can get a few minutes’ peace and quiet.” She bows her head real low, and Mel swears she catches the flash of her teeth in the half-second before they vanish in the shadow of her hat. “Sound like a plan?”

Mel blinks, maybe a dozen times. “I… well, I’m not sure I understand.”

“Of course you don’t.” Janice sighs, and mutters something under her breath that sounds a lot like _‘amateurs’_. “Look. There ain’t no sense in starting a fresh dig if you’re not fresh yourself. That’s just common sense. I’ve worked too long and too hard to see my efforts wasted because you’re too spoiled to live on jerky for one more goddamn day.”

Mel has to fight real hard to keep from smirking. “And of course this little decision has nothing at all to do with _your_ growling belly?”

“Like I said,” Janice throws back. “You’re imagining things.”

“Well, now, I suppose I must be,” Mel says. “Because if I didn’t know any better, Doctor Covington, I’d swear I just saw you smiling.”

Janice glares. “I don’t _smile_.”

Mel, naturally, has sense enough not to argue with that.

*

It’s not the first time Janice has made an off-the-cuff decision like this.

Point of fact, she does that sort of thing all the time. It’s another one of the million or more ways she’s a great big walking contradiction, the way she bounces around all over the place like it makes perfect sense. A revenant from her chaotic upbringing, maybe; Mel has never met anyone quite as obsessively bloody-minded as Janice when she gets her heart set on something, but she’s also never met anyone so darn easily distracted. And, okay, so it’s not like she’d ever _literally_ slam the on brakes for the sake of something shiny in the road, but there’s days when she’s restless, tapping the wheel that way she does when she’s far away and thinking, that Mel halfway expects her to do just that. Sure as anything, she knows that Janice would drive them both right off a cliff if she thought there was a scroll at the bottom.

She hasn’t done it yet, but Mel’s pretty sure it’s only a matter of time.

Anyway. Point is, this isn’t the first time they’ve taken a big ol’ detour to some unknown neck of the woods on a seemingly random whim. What it is, however, is the first time she’s done it for Mel’s sake.

Janice doesn’t like letting Mel have anything, necessary or otherwise. She doesn’t yield, not to anyone, but it always feels kind of personal when it’s the two of them, and not just from Mel’s own perspective. Janice doesn’t see her right, she knows; she’s still seeing the ‘spoiled brat’ she latched onto the day they first met, and of course now they’ve been together a while she takes any kind of request as a symptom of that, the mark of a pampered, privileged life that needs to be beaten out of her.

 _“It ain’t like that out here,”_ she says, like Mel doesn’t know that just fine, thank you very much, like she never set foot out of her mother’s arms before she materialised in Janice’s tent that day.

Mel knows better, of course, but she also knows that this isn’t something you can explain to someone as bull-headed and set in her ways as Janice Covington. Talk is cheap so far as she’s concerned, so Mel has use action instead, has to make it real clear by the way she doesn’t falter, the way she keeps pace in everything they do, the way she even outmatches her sometimes when Janice is running on cigars and coffee and Mel’s smart enough to have eaten a halfway decent meal before setting out into the desert for hours on end. Janice is learning, slowly but surely, that there’s more to Melinda Pappas than some spoiled Southern kid, but it’s gonna take time for her to get there for good, and until she does Mel’s had to learn how to get by without.

It goes without saying, then, that Janice has never done something like this before. On anyone else it might be a simple sort of gesture, as much the product of her own hunger as her partner’s, but Mel suspects there’s a bit more to this than just food and a hot bath. Janice isn’t really saying _‘you’re no good to me if you’re hungry and whiny’_ , she’s also saying _‘I take care of my people’_.

Mel wonders, briefly, when she became one of Janice’s people.

She wonders, too, if maybe there’s a corner of Janice stubborn little head that remembers some part of last night. She knows better than to ask again if she dreamed, or what even she was thinking about before she fell asleep, but there’s a softness in her this morning that Mel hasn’t really seen before. Even in her least violent moments, she’s still _Janice_ , still cocksure and arrogant and always right on the knife-edge of anger. She’s not the sort of person who could ever soften completely, Mel knows, but now for the first time she’s talking to her like they’re almost equals, like maybe they’re _friends_. It’s everything Mel wants out of this partnership, and everything Janice really doesn’t.

There has to be a part of her that remembers, if not the dream, at least the part where Mel was there, where her voice cut through all that desperation and pain to bring a kind of comfort; she has to have some echo inside her had of that moment, the one where they almost connected, where she seemed to hear for the very first time that promise Mel has been repeating ever since she signed on with her. A sensible woman doesn’t agree to days stuck in a truck without a bath or a half-decent meal without feeling something deeper than duty, after all, and Mel was never really in this for the love of history. Go figure that Janice is a slow learner.

Mel doesn’t mention it, though. She’s curious, even aching a little, but she knows Janice too well to press that button now. The woman might think she’s a closed door, but most of the time she’s exactly the opposite. Every thought in that head of hers is written right there on her face, as plain and clear as the centuries-dried ink on her beloved scrolls. If she remembers what happened last night, she doesn’t want to talk about it, and if she doesn’t… well. There are worse things, Mel thinks, than keeping a moment like that locked away.

They’ve been back on the road maybe a couple of hours when Janice shifts a little in her seat and blurts out, “It’s not too awful, is it?”

Mel blinks a few times. “Could you be a touch more specific?”

Janice growls deep in her throat. It’s a sound she makes often when she’s feeling uneasy or threatened, and it’s a pretty telling tip-off to the nature of this conversation. She never gets this kind of defensive when they’re chatting about work.

“You know,” she mutters, and Mel would swear to the heavens that she’s blushing under that silly old hat. “All of it. The digs, the scrolls, the endless days spent cooped up in a truck with…” She trails off, bites her lip for a second, then sighs. “… _me_.”

“Well, goodness,” Mel says. The self-awareness behind the question isn’t lost on her, and she knows to proceed with caution. “Do you really think I’d’ve stuck around as long as I have if it was really as bad as all that? I got legs, Doctor Covington, and the last time I checked they worked real well.” She musters a smile, but it only makes Janice flush deeper. “You’re not holding that gun of yours to my head to make me stay, now, are you? I can walk away any time I want.”

“I know that,” Janice snaps. She’s got both hands on the wheel, knuckles tight and white. Mel wants to stroke them until they unclench. “But it’s not…” She huffs out an angry, frustrated breath. “I know I’m not the easiest person to get cooped up with, is all.”

“Well, no, you’re not.” She can’t deny it, after all, and she’s not about to insult either of their intelligence by trying. “But I don’t see that that’s ever stopped you before.”

Eyes open again, Janice leans forward, hunching over the wheel until her hat shrouds her whole face. “Never much cared before,” she says, very quietly.

Mel has to work real hard to keep her mouth dropping open. “Oh.”

“Not saying I care now either, mind,” Janice says. It’s a little too quick, though, and she has to realise it’s not fooling anyone. “Just… hell, all this whining of yours. _‘No sleep’_ this, _‘no food’_ that. Gets a girl thinking.”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t call it _whining_ , exactly…”

“Sure you wouldn’t.” She doesn’t press it like she normally would, though, and that’s a surprise in itself. “Point is, I don’t want to burn you out. Don’t want you to wake up one morning and think _‘Jesus, what the hell was I thinking, throwing in with that loose cannon?’_.” She swallows, thick and nicotine-starved. “I don’t wanna be someone else’s regret, Mel. And I sure as hell don’t wanna be yours.”

Mel thinks again of last night, the salt sticking to her fingers, the flutter of Janice’s eyelashes, the way she responded to the sound of her voice.

She knows that it’s nothing personal. She knows that Janice would have probably responded that way to anyone at all, that it wasn’t _Mel’s_ voice that soothed her but _a_ voice, that it was just a quiet little corner of her subconscious responding to the fact that someone was out there trying to break through. She knows that, she really does, but it’s so darn difficult not to feel like it was something deeper now in the light of day, when Janice is talking to her but not looking at her, when her hands are tight on the wheel and her face is all hidden in the shadow of her hat, when for maybe the first time since they met she’s kinda sorta admitting that she cares.

It can’t be a coincidence, Mel thinks, that only last night she was flailing and whimpering and crying that she didn’t.

Again, she wants to ask. _‘Did you have some kind of revelation or something?’_ , all innocuous and such, so vague that even Janice can’t possibly get worked up about it. She wants so badly to test the waters, to see if this was something she did by choice or some secret shimmering thing that’s hidden under the surface, something she doesn’t even really realise is there. She wants to see what she’ll admit to, if she’ll shut down and close herself off, deny that there’s anything between them in those moments when she’s crying out and Mel’s the only one there to hear her. She wants to reach into the space between their bodies, touch her face like she did last night, and say, _‘do you know how vulnerable you are when you’re like that?’_

She doesn’t, of course. She’s a faster learner than Janice.

“I got plenty of regrets,” she says instead; she’ll let the focus linger on her, if that’s what it takes to make this easier. “But you better believe me when I say you won’t ever be one of them.”

Janice looks up from the road, lets Mel see the flash of hope in her eye. She’s vulnerable now too, but it’s so different from the way she was last night. This time she knows what she’s doing, and she knows perfectly well that she’s letting Mel see it. She’s in complete control of herself now, and when she speaks the words are hers by choice.

“You sure?”

It’s a simple question, but Mel’s never felt so much pressure from just two words.

Again, she finds herself overwhelmed with the ache to touch Janice’s face. She wants to let her fingers trace the long-dried salt-tracks, see if she responds at all. She wouldn’t find anything there now, of course, the tears long since dried in the light of day, but maybe she’d find something else, something cleaner or something sweeter, something that could be _theirs_.

She doesn’t, because she knows Janice would take her hand off if she dared to try, but _oh_ , she wants to.

She can feel a strange kind of pain starting to burn in her chest. It’s deep, deeper than any pain she’s familiar with, and it kicks at her ribs in a strange, unfamiliar rhythm, out of sync with her heartbeat. It frightens her, the feeling, almost more than the look on Janice’s face when she lifts her head again, when the hat tilts back a little and Mel sees for the very first time just how bright those eyes of hers can get.

“I’m sure,” she says, in sync with that strange, kicking pain. “I’m real sure.”

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

It’s a real big detour for just a meal and a bath.

As a general rule, Janice’s dig sites are at least thirty miles out from the nearest road sign, much less anything that might resemble civilisation. She knows her way pretty good around a map, and she’s been living hand to mouth so long that keeping a close eye on her resources is practically second nature to her; Mel’s never had to think about things like water before, but Janice watches it like it’s gold dust. The first place they dug out, they were a full half-day’s drive from the nearest town, and every dig since then has been further and further out into the great wide nothing. More and more, Mel finds herself waking up up in a cold sweat, worrying about what might happen if the truck breaks down and they get stranded.

Janice isn’t one for sticking around in civilised places more than she absolutely has to. She doesn’t like to stop what she’s doing, and she never, ever recharges her batteries. If not for Mel, she probably would’ve driven herself into the ground long before now, labouring away out there in the dirt and the heat; they’d be digging up her body along with the darn scrolls, worn down to the bone from over-exertion. Sometimes Mel thinks she has an aversion to comfort, like she’s spent so long keeping her head above water she doesn’t remember what it feels like to be safe and sound on dry land.

They’ve been travelling together for weeks now, back and forth across the continent, dig site to dig site, and Janice has never spent more than an hour inside an actual four-walled building. She doesn’t believe in rest and relaxation, and she doesn’t understand why anyone would throw away good money on a fancy meal when there’s a perfectly good box of graham crackers sitting in the truck. She goes in, stocks up supplies and cigars, then hops back into the truck and rolls on. Mel gets breathless sometimes, just trying to keep up with her.

That’s why this little rest-stop feels so extraordinary. Janice will be be climbing the walls within minutes, Mel knows, itching and twitching to get back out there into the dirt that feels like home, but here she is, toughing it out for Mel’s sake. It’s about the sweetest thing Mel’s ever seen hr do, but she knows better than to try and thank her for it. She knows Janice too well; stubborn as she is, she’d sooner die than accept that kind of fool sentiment.

It’s a small town they stop in, run-down and as looking as worn out as Mel feels. It’s probably closer to a village, really, only it’s the only civilised place in a hundred miles so it gets called a town by default. It’s cute, Mel thinks, and kind of homely, the sort of place where everybody knows most everyone. She’s not seen many little spots like this herself; where she grew up it was all big houses and plantations, every drop of space owned by someone or something.

Looking around at the collection of squalid little buildings — a scattering of modest houses, a couple of convenience stores and motels, and what looks like a well-used bar — she can’t help wondering if this isn’t exactly the sort of quaint little spot Xena and Gabrielle would stop by on their travels, looking to kill a little time and catch their breath between adventures.

The thought is a humbling one. History isn’t really Mel’s speciality, at least not in and of itself; she’s more into language and its evolution than the wheres and whens and whys of what happened back then. Still, looking around this place, untouched as it seems to be by the simmering unrest out there the wider world, she finds her curiosity piqued just the same, the thirst for knowledge stirring inside of her for the first time since that fateful day in Ares’s tomb. She wonders if Xena grew up like in a place like this, if the great warrior princess had her humble roots in a middle-of-nowhere, salt-of-the-earth village with delusions of township. It’s a sweet sort of image, and she can’t help the way it lights her up inside, bringing an unexpected smile to her face.

Janice notices the shift in her expression, misinterprets historical nostalgia for something a touch more present and a whole lot more personal.

“You got something to say?” she asks, shoulders going tight like they do when she imagines a slight.

Mel swallows the smile real quick. “No, ma’am.”

“Good.” She digs through her pockets for a second, then tosses a handful of crumpled bills at Mel’s head. Mel catches them, but not without a startled yelp. “General store’s that way. All the ‘proper food’ a home-grown girl like you could ask for.”

She’s laying it on real thick, the attitude and the authority both, turning away with her hands jammed in her jacket pockets, like she can somehow overshadow the soft gesture by being even more of a hard-head than usual. It won’t work, of course, though Mel knows better than to try and point that out.

“Now, Janice…” she starts, chiding.

“Yeah, yeah. Save the lectures till we’re back on the road.” She turns back, if only for a moment. “Stock up on supplies while you’re there, okay? Gonna be a long time before we’re back in a place like this.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Mel frowns down at the bills in her hand. This isn’t her field of expertise; frankly, she’s not even sure which corner of the continent they’re in this week, much less which currency they’re using or what counts as ‘supplies’. Janice is usually the one who deals with the sundries and the stock-keeping; she’s real particular about her money, guarding it like a dragon with its hoard. Mel’s not exactly cut out for this sort of thing, and she shudders to think what Janice will do to her if she dares to over-spend.

“Me?” she asks, in a hesitant sort of squeak.

Janice rolls her shoulders. She doesn’t even bother to look at her. “You got a problem with that?” she asks. It’s rhetorical, Mel can tell; woe betide her if she answers. “You’re the one who wanted something to eat.”

“Well, sure. But…” She flounders a little, the argument strangling in her throat. She doesn’t want to come off as inept, after all. “What about you?”

Janice meets her eye for the first time since she cut the truck’s engine. There’s an odd look on her face, challenging but not nearly as belligerent as Mel would have expected. She’s not really angry, Mel realises; she’s just trying to keep her on her toes, trying to make her feel indebted. It’s not really playful, at least not by anyone’s standards who has half a shred of humanity in their bones, but… well, it’s _Janice_. She doesn’t exactly play like normal people do. In her wild little head, she probably thinks this is all in good fun.

“Someone’s gotta see about that bath, don’t they?” she says, and flashes her teeth.

Well, now, Mel thinks. That’s just _unfair_.

She opens her mouth to point that out, to asks why she gets stuck on grocery duty while Janice gets to splash around in the first drop of clean water they’ve seen in days. She wants to make a real grand show of it, to make Janice see that there’s nothing ‘fun’ in depriving a lady of her _toilette_ , but before she can even get a word out, Janice goes and flashes her that look, the one that says she’s the boss here, and _Lord_ if Mel doesn’t just lose her voice completely.

“You’re really something, Janice Covington,” she musters instead.

It’s a weak counter, sure, but heck if it isn’t the truth. 

Janice, of course, laps it right up. She tips her hat, a cool look on her face, and says, “You better believe it.”

Mel doesn’t point out that it wasn’t a compliment. Knowing Janice, she’d just appreciate it all the more.

*

To call it ‘proper food’ would be overselling it somewhat.

Mel isn’t really the kind of prim-and-proper fussy eater that Janice seems to think she is, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a gal with standards. At the very least she can tell the difference between good food and… well, _not_ food, and this is a whole lot closer to the latter than the former. It’s not that it isn’t edible, exactly, it’s just that it’s a serious challenge to figure out what the heck it actually is. Now, Mel’s not about to go getting all nostalgic for the jerky any time soon, but _goodness_ if this stuff doesn’t bring her pretty darn close.

“What’d you expect?” Janice asks, when they reunite back at the truck. “Times are tough, Mel. World’s changing. People don’t got the time or the strength to worry about what their lunch tastes like any more. They’re just thankful for what they can get.”

True enough, Mel supposes, and concedes the point with a disappointed sigh. As a rule, she tries not to think too much about that sort of business, the chaos outside their safe little bubble of ancient history and archaeology, the wider world with its wider problems. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, far worse than whatever semi-edible fluff she’s thrown their money away on.

Shaking off the thought with more effort than she’d care to admit, she tosses her newly-purchased ‘supplies’ onto the back of the truck, then casts a studious eye over Janice. Given how insistent she was on getting to the bath first, she sure don’t seem any cleaner now than she was before. It’s kind of hard to tell, though, whether that’s because she’s no good at getting herself clean or whether dirt just sort of follows her around. Spend enough time digging around in the stuff, Mel supposes, you start to feel uncomfortable without a layer of it sticking to your skin.

She lets her gaze linger on Janice’s hands for a beat or two, then says, “Please tell me you had better luck finding us a bath?”

Janice nods, then cocks her head towards one of the beat-up motel-looking buildings. “All yours, sweetheart,” she says, and tosses over a rusted little key. “Got you a room for the night too. Nice feather pillow and all that bull. Don’t say I never give you anything.”

There’s something heavy and not at all subtle in the way she says that, excluding herself, and of course Mel doesn’t let her get away with it. “You mean ‘us’,” she says, framing it so it’s not a question.

“Did I stutter?” Janice shoots back, irritable. “I said ‘you’, and that’s what I meant.” She tries to soften, and doesn’t entirely succeed. “I’m doing just fine out here. You’re the one who was miserable in the truck, not me.”

Mel can tell there’s more to it than that, and not just because Janice has been complaining about her stiff neck and aching back for almost as long as they’ve been back on the road. It’s not about the luxury, she knows, and it’s sure as heck not about modesty.

Janice is as far from the shy, self-conscious type as a human being can get, and she’s never demurred on sharing sleeping space before. Mel could name a dozen people from back home who would clutch at their pearls just to imagine two unrelated women in a room with just one bed, but Janice has never set any stock by the kind of things Mel’s folks would consider decent. She goes her own way, and never thinks twice about it.

Usually, Mel’s the one second-guessing. She’s the one who’s never had to share a room before, even with her kin; she’s the one who’s never let a soul who wasn’t her mother see her without her brassiere. She’s the one who blushed the first time she and Janice shared a room, the one who can’t get comfortable when they sleep in the truck, the one who once balked to think of all the little intimacies she might have to share with Janice by necessity of this strange new lifestyle. Mel’s the one who had to come to terms with a lot when she came out here, but Janice… well, she just gets on with it. So far as she’s concerned,it’s no different seeing Mel half-naked than it is tossing her a shovel and saying _‘get to work’_. She laughed like a drain the first time Mel turned her face away, and since they started running together Mel’s never once seen her shaken.

She’s especially touchy when it comes to stuff like this, battered, bug-infested rooms in sleazy motels. The truck is one thing, but it doesn’t cost her anything to sleep out there. Janice doesn’t much care if Mel’s modesty gets the better of her when they’re out there on the open road, but when it’s a room she’s gone and paid for it all becomes a point of pride. It won’t stand, she grumbles, wasting money over silly feminine modesty.

So they don’t. Mel still struggles sometimes with her awkwardness, the part of her that’s never felt real comfortable in her body, that shivers at the thought of being seen, but she’s getting better at that. She sucks it up now, with just a little effort, and lets Janice stare all she likes; slowly but surely, she’s come to accept that this is just what people do when they live like this. And, well, Janice is right about the cost; their budget isn’t exactly growing while they’re out in the field, and nights under a real roof with a real bed don’t come cheap.

That’s what makes it so odd, the fact that Janice is the one getting all coy and silly all of a sudden, the one insisting that she’s fine someplace else. She’ll deny it to the Heavens, of course, but Mel knows she appreciates a nice warm room just as much as the next soul. It makes no sense that she’d balk at it now.

“Now, don’t be silly,” Mel hears herself say. “Unless that ol’ room is somehow smaller than the tin-can you’ve been driving around in, there’s no reason why we can’t share it. We’ve done it enough times before, haven’t we?” She shoots Janice a cool look, or as close to one as she ever manages, and nudges her in the ribs. “You and I both know there’s nothing on that little body of yours that I done haven’t seen already.”

Janice glares, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She does a real good job of pretending she’s sullen and not self-conscious, but Mel sees through it as easy as anything. “Less of the ‘little’,” she grumbles. “And it’s not about that. You think I give a damn if you see me naked? God knows, you could learn a thing or two.”

Mel frowns. She’s not sure what that means, but she’s not about to let Janice derail her. “Well, then,” she says, “what in tarnation is it about?”

Janice turns a very strange colour, and turns away. “That’s my business,” she says.

“Now, I do believe that’s _our_ business,” Mel corrects. She keeps her tone sweet and low, more so than it probably should be, not because she thinks she stands a chance of placating Janice, but because she knows it will annoy her. If she can’t win her over with compassion or common sense, then darn it all, she’ll make her so mad she can’t see straight enough to argue. “We’re a team now, remember?”

“No.” Janice’s eyes are spitting fire. “Jesus Christ. Get off my back, will you?”

Tempting as it is sometimes to do exactly that when she’s being juvenile, Mel doesn’t do it this time. For a start it would be too easy, and more to the point it would be exactly what Janice wants. Mel might not know much about archaeology or Ancient Greece, but she knows a whole darn lot about dealing with people who don’t want to be dealt with. She already has a pretty decent idea of what this is really about, and she’s never been coy about using what she knows to get what she wants.

She touches Janice’s shoulder, waits for the inevitable glare, then pulls back real slow. “This is about those dreams you’re ‘not having’,” she says, ever so quietly. “Isn’t it, now?”

The glare gets hotter. Mel knew it would. “Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janice growls. “I told you already, I don’t dream.”

“Well, sure, you _say_ —”

“But hell,” Janice goes on, interrupting her with all the efficiency of a bucket of cold water. “If you really gotta know, it’s about you and your goddamned _‘I can’t sleep through all your tossing and turning’_ bull.”

Mel winces, feeling suddenly abashed. “Oh,” she says, as contrite as she can. “Well, I… that is, I didn’t mean for you to go making yourself uncomfortable on my account.”

“Pfft. Like I’d ever do that.” She would, Mel knows. She just wouldn’t ever admit it any place someone might hear. “Fact is, I’m gonna need you on your game once we get to our next dig. You’re no damn use to me if you’re dropping off on the job. If that means setting you up in some fancy room on your own for a night or two so you can catch up on your shut-eye, I’m pretty sure I’ll survive. Whatever you might think about me, my ego doesn’t bruise that easy.”

Mel studies her, feeling a strange sadness churn in her chest. _You sure about that?_

She knows it’s not true, and she knows too that Janice knows it. If her ego really was as tough as she likes to pretend it is, she wouldn’t need all this flashy bravado just to make out that she cares. She’d just say the darn words and be done with it.

“Goodness, Janice,” Mel says, “I don’t need some fancy room.”

“Sure you don’t.” Janice tries to grin, but it’s jagged at the edges, sharp where it’s trying to be smooth, and it doesn’t look like one at all. “But maybe you…” Her voice catches, rough in her throat, and she has to cough a few times to clear it. “Hell, maybe you _deserve_ it.”

Mel feels the sadness swell, like a bubble fit to burst on the wrong side of her lungs. “It’s no chore,” she says softly. “You know that, right? I’m here with you ’cause I want to be. Simple as that. I don’t need—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Janice interrupts. “Keep tossing me that line, maybe one day I’ll bite. But it doesn’t matter why you’re here, or whether you’re crazy for putting up with me, or any of it. What matters is the fact that I’m keeping you awake. What matters is you’re a good broad, and you deserve a decent night’s sleep once in a while. Jesus, it ain’t so much to ask for, is it?” She closes her eyes for a second, and swallows hard. “Wouldn’t be if it were me. If you were the one tossing and turning and making an ass out of yourself every damned night, you think I’d sit there quietly and just put up with it?”

Mel tries to smile. She does think that. Maybe even knows it.

She doesn’t tell Janice that, though. Heaven only knows the reaction she’d get if she did. “Fair enough,” she says instead, and tries not to wonder too much why she’s not as excited as she should be about the whole ‘decent night’s sleep’ thing. “But what about you? Don’t tell me you’re gonna sleep in that dang truck again?”

Janice shrugs, cool and casual, like she hasn’t even bothered to think about it. She doesn’t seem to care much either way, and it’s strange the way it hurts a little to think about that. Mel knows that Janice won’t waste her resources on another room all for herself, but somehow the thought of her out there in that silly vehicle all on her lonesome just flat-out breaks her heart.

“I’ll figure something out,” Janice says, like it’s no big deal at all.

Well, maybe it’s not, at least to her. She looked after herself well enough for years before their paths ever crossed, and Mel isn’t so naïve as to think that she’s changed much of her lifestyle on her account. Maybe she’s getting a touch more protein in her now than she used to, and a fraction less caffeine, but that’s not much of a compromise when she seems hell-bent most of the time on driving herself into an early grave. Mel’s learned by now to just sit back and keep clear when she gets it in her head to self-destruct, and pray to the Heavens that the blast radius isn’t too wide.

Still, in spite of herself, she has to ask. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

Janice laughs at that, a coarse sound with a keen, cruel edge. “Without my big strong bodyguard, you mean?”

Mel doesn’t rise to the bait this time. “Now, don’t you go taking that tone with me. You know what I mean.”

“Okay, okay.” For once, she seems more amused than affronted by the needless coddling. Mel thinks that’s a good thing. Maybe even a kind of progress. “I’ll be fine, Mel, I promise. They got a bar that-a-way. Cheap booze, cheap cigarettes, cheap wo— _wine_.” She clears her throat, turning pink for a second, then shakes it off. “If I drink myself into enough of a stupor, then it won’t matter where I drop my head.”

Needless to say, that’s about the worst idea Mel’s ever heard. “Janice…”

Janice rolls her eyes. The amusement is gone now, and her trademark scowl is back in place. “I’m kidding, Mel. Jesus. You know I don’t toss my money down the drain.”

Well, sure, Mel knows that. Anyone who’s ever met her knows that.

Funny, then, how it doesn’t stop her from worrying.

*

It’s funny how a small room can feel so darn big.

The bath, at least, is a joy. The water’s not as hot as Mel might liked, being the kind of gal who takes it scalding, but it’s clean and mostly warm and the tub is big and it’s all just _wonderful_. She soaks in there for what feels like hours, long past the point where her fingers and toes start to prune, and she only hauls herself out at all because she’s starting to get chilly.

It’s one of the few things she really, truly hates about running with Janice. There’s not much about this life of adventure that fazes her, really; the days and weeks out in the middle of nowhere with civilisation just a faraway memory, sleeping in tents or in the truck with Janice’s thrashing and wailing and snoring… it’s all just living. She takes it in stride, wears it almost like a badge of honour. She doesn’t mind the crazy hours or the crazy work or even Janice’s crazy company, but _Lord_ if she doesn’t hate feeling dirty.

Janice thinks that makes her spoiled, a mark of her fancy upbringing that she gets so worked up over something so silly, that it means she can’t handle ‘living rough’, but Mel knows it’s nothing of the sort. She can — and does — keep in step, working just as hard and just as diligently as Janice does, and most of the time without so much as a word of complaint. She doesn’t back down even when she wants to, and she only puts her foot down when she knows she’s got a darn good reason. It doesn’t make her weak or spoiled or anything else, not being ashamed to admit that some little thing isn’t completely to her liking.

It’s taken her some time to realise that. Janice is pretty hard on her, occasionally affectionate but always stiff and moody; everything she says and does is aimed like a poison dart. It’s like she thinks she can pour all her own flaws out into Mel, make her the scapegoat for all the things she hates inside herself. It took Mel a good long while to figure out that’s what she’s doing, to catch the pattern underneath the biting words, and it took her longer still to stop getting hurt and sad every time Janice pointed an unfair finger at some silly little thing she did or said or thought. She’s learned, slowly but surely, that the problem lies with Janice, not with her.

So, sure, Mel takes liberties with the bath now that it’s here. She relishes the feeling of not having dirt under her fingernails, the feeling of being clean and warm and comfortable for the first time in days. She waits until she’s wilted, until the water’s all but cold, until even a fish would’ve given up and taken to land, and she doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about it. She loves Janice’s company, she really does, but she can’t deny that it feels so darn good to not have her here right now, hovering over her shoulder and itching to tell her how pampered she is for daring to enjoy herself a spell.

It’s only afterwards, when she’s all wrapped up in a big fluffy towel, warm and sated and and sitting on the hard little bed, that she looks around and feels alone.

The bedroom is tiny. Really, really tiny. Mel’s pretty sure that even Janice would find it a tight squeeze, and that gal could fit in a closet with room to spare. The bathroom is spacey enough for the bathtub and a washbasin, but the bedroom don’t fit nothing but the bed. Still, it’s a darn sight bigger than the truck they’ve been curled up in for the last few days, and that alone makes it seem bigger than it otherwise would.

Mel tries to convince herself that’s why the space around her feels so vast, why the air feels so empty even when there’s so little of it, but deep down in that strange sad place she knows that’s not really the case. It’s not the room itself that feels so big and hollow. It’s all the space where Janice isn’t.

It’s a fool’s thought. She knows that well enough. It’s sentimental, senseless, and more than a little shameful. Janice wouldn’t mince her words if she were here; she’d just call her ‘stupid’ and be done with it. And Mel knows it’s close to the truth. She should be embracing the silence, the solitude, the chance for a little time and space to herself. The luxuriant feeling she had in the bath should linger out here too; she knows it should. But somehow it doesn’t.

When her hair’s dried out some, she lies back on the bed, stretches her limbs out until she feels the joints crack. It’s a strange feeling, stretching out to her full length and not feeling bad about it. That’s not really happened since she started travelling with Janice. It’s rare enough that they get to sleep under a roof at all, and when they do they have to share everything. Janice plays the gentleman as far as the bed goes; she hunkers down on the floor or a chair or whatever happens to be lying around, curls herself up real small and pretends she’s comfortable. It’s a nice gesture, and Mel’s long legs are grateful, but it’s hard not to feel like a horrible person when she’s all spread out on the bed and Janice is using her jacket as a blanket on the floor.

She doesn’t need to keep up appearances now, not when she’s alone like this, and it should feel great. It’s a kind of freedom she’d all but forgotten, sort of, but she doesn’t feel free at all. Heaven preserve her, she just feels lonely.

Funny how that happens. Funny how people can wriggle their way under the skin without either side even realising it. Janice is about a thousand miles away from everything Mel is and does and likes. She’s crude and rude, violent and vengeful, and Mel has never met another living soul with worse table manners; she didn’t think it was possible to make a mess of beef jerky, but somehow Janice manages it every time. She walks and talks, dresses and and acts like a man, strutting around like she owns everyone and everything, and every well-bred nerve in Mel’s body knows she should find it maddening.

It threw her for a loop, the first time they got undressed in a room like this. Honestly it confused the ever-loving heck out her. Standing there with her mouth half-open like a dang fool, watching as Janice stripped down to her delicates and realising as though for the first time that, _yes_ , Janice really is a woman under all that smoking and spitting and swearing. It made her uncomfortable, maybe even made her blush, all those odd little contradictions she never thought she’d seen in a member of her own sex. Embarrassing though it is to admit now, it took her some time to accept.

She still feels it sometimes, that peculiar confusion, when she’s a little too tired and she lets her thoughts drift places they shouldn’t. Her breath comes short, her chest gets real tight, and for a second or two she’s sure she’ll pass out. It’s not the same as it was back then, though; it’s still a kind of uncomfortable, sort of, but it’s definitely not bad.

She doesn’t want to spend the night alone, she realises, thunderstruck by how simple and how strange that feeling is. She doesn’t want to be here if Janice is someplace else.

It’s a stupid thing to feel, selfish and wasteful when Janice has gone to so much effort, but there it is, sure as anything. She doesn’t want a ‘decent night’s sleep’ if it means waking up every five minutes wondering and worrying about where Janice is, what she’s doing, if she’s all right. _What if she’s dreaming? What if I’m not there to calm her? What if she blasts her own head off with that silly gun of hers?_ So many questions, so many thoughts, and when in the world did she become the sort of gal who thought things like that, anyway? When did Janice become the sort of gal — heck, the sort of _person_ — that Mel thinks those things about? What in Heaven’s name has happened to her in these few weeks?

It’s a couple of hours later, well into the evening, when she jerks herself upright, struck by a sudden wave of claustrophobia. It’s an odd feeling — she’s never been affected by things like that before — but there it is, slamming straight through her like an ocean wave. All of a sudden, she can’t stand it. The hard, creaking bed, the room so small and so big at the same time, the space around her so cramped and so stifling.

It’s too much. They’ve been sleeping in the truck for days now, the two of them together, sharing breath and warmth and Heaven only knows what else. They were together before that too, stuck in the same tiny little tent for at least a week; unproductive though their last dig was, Janice refused to throw in the towel until she had no choice, and it’s been too long since Mel was last in a room with walls. There’s too many surfaces, she thinks, and not enough space. There’s too much furniture and not enough _Janice_.

She knows she’s being absurd, knows this is bordering on madness. She got everything she could’ve ever wanted, a sort-of hot bath and a sort-of meal and a not-so-sort-of bed. This is a sweet, thoughtful thing Janice is doing for her, a kind and generous thing. Mel has always been taught never to show ingratitude, lest the gift be taken back and leave her wanting. In any case, she knows that it would probably tear Janice apart to think that the one nice thing she ever did has gone so wrong, but still she can’t seem to help herself.

She feels like she used to when she was a kid back home, young and full up on imagination. It would always run away with her when the lights went out, when night fell and the wind whipped through the trees outside. She’s no coward, but _goodness_ how those long, dark nights used to frighten her. She could bring down the house with her wailing, her mama used to say, but she’d always hold her for as long as it took to make it stop.

Of course, Mel’s a full-grown woman now. Those old days of crying for her mama are far behind her now, and the good Lord knows she’d never cry for Janice Covington. Still, it is what it is, and she doesn’t need to change into her nightclothes and crawl up under the covers to know that she won’t sleep so much as a a wink without all that tossing and turning and sleep-talking to keep her company. Ingratitude, it may just be, but she can’t very well help it.

She sits there for a while, weighing her options, knowing full well that there aren’t any good ones. There’s waiting out the rest of the night in this room, alone and lonely and secretly missing Janice, or there’s going down to that sleazy bar and seeing if she doesn’t punch her in the nose for being ungrateful and childish. No question which of the two is safe, which of the two is sensible, which of the two she ought to do.

 _Stick it out,_ she thinks. _She did this for your sake. Probably the only kindness she’s ever done in her life, bless her stony little heart, and you wanna turn around and take that away from her?_

Put that way, it makes it really difficult to justify the other option.

No prizes, then, for guessing which is the one she ends up taking.

*

She hesitates, even long after she gives in to the idea.

Funny, how things turn out that way. All that time spent agonising over it, thinking it through from every possible angle, shaping arguments and counter-arguments in her head, figuring out the most logical option just like her daddy taught her to do, and at the end of all that she still ends up going for the silly, self-indulgent option.

Funny, sure, but kind of sad too. Maybe it’s an academic thing, or at least the kind of academic Daddy taught her how to be. _‘Gotta look at every side,’_ he taught her, over and over. _‘Gotta figure out exactly how you’re gonna tell the story before you put the pen to paper.’_ So funny, and so darn sad, how even after all that she still goes and messes it up.

Well, that’s her choice, for better or worse. At least, that’s how she figures it. Janice’s heart might have been in the right place when she dropped all that money on a room just for Mel, but Mel won’t be getting no sleep anyhow if she has to do it alone.

She dresses without much thought, or so she tells herself, tossing on the first outfit she can find. Practical, slimming, intellectual-looking, it’s not much different from the other half-dozen semi-smart suits she brought with her on this little adventure; Janice is always teasing her about that, telling her she’s set in her ways, wondering out loud how a gal can be so obsessed with looking nice all the time and so opposed to a little variety. Well, that’s fine and dandy, Mel thinks, but what use is variety when you’ve already found something that works?

(Of course, she neglects to mention the fact that Janice has exactly one and a half sets of clothes in her entire wardrobe, and thus is in no position to judge. That’d just be asking for trouble.)

Fact is, she could probably say the same thing about Janice and this half-cocked arrangement they have going on. Not the lack of variety, mind, but the ‘why change something that works?’. Don’t much matter if it makes any kind of sense to anyone else; the plain fact is, things just work better when they’re together. Whether Janice realises it or not, Mel’s voice keeps her calm when she’s dreaming. It transforms her completely, makes her born again and born new. And Mel… heck, Mel just misses the heck out of her when she’s not around. Isn’t that reason enough to not start mixing things up now?

So, there she is, decision made and clothes meticulously brushed down. Sensible skirt, crisp white shirt — the first clean one she’s had in days, for the record — and low, smart heels. Janice talks a big game about how she’s the real proper working woman, but Mel’s the one who dresses the part and they both know it. Not that Janice would ever admit to being jealous, of course, but Mel knows that she is. She’s seen the way she watches the sway of her hips, the way she stares at her collars and her hemline just a little too long and a little too hard to be decent. If that’s not jealousy… well, Mel’s at a loss to know what it is.

She’s not sure what to expect, really, when she saunters her way into that sleazy bar. A lot of smoke, most likely. In that, at the very least, she’s not disappointed.

Janice is sat down squarely in front of the bar. She’s got one foot braced on her barstool, the other hanging a few inches off the ground, and Mel has to bite down on a laugh because sitting there like that she looks so darn short. She acts so big all the time, it’s hard to remember that she’s a good head or two shorter; even when Mel’s straight-up craning her neck to look down at her, Janice still looms larger than life.

Even now, hanging off the barstool like a kid trying to sneak onto a roller coaster, she still acts like she owns the place; all tough and smug, with a cigar in one hand and a shot of something dark and strong in the other, she looks right at home in this sleazy place, comfortable and easy in a way she never is when she’s hunched over the wheel of the truck.

The look on her face… well, Mel only wishes it came as a surprise. The half-lidded eyes and lazy smirk speak volumes, and Mel doesn’t need to ask to know that she’s not here to nurse a slow, casual drink. ‘ _I don’t toss my money down the drain’, my giddy aunt,_ she thinks, shaking her head. From the look of her, she’s halfway down her third.

She’s keeping company with an older fella, a great big bear of a man with shoulders as wide as the truck; they’re chatting away, oblivious, like they’re the best of buddies. Mel suspects it’s the liquor loosening Janice’s tongue more than the company, making her almost friendly, but there’s a warmth in the guy’s posture that tells her they’re familiar with each other. A friend of hers, Mel supposes, or possibly an old friend of her daddy’s; either way, she seems to know him well enough to drop her guard and relax a little. Mel doesn’t know what to make of that; she’s never seen it before.

 _It’s gotta be the drink_ , she thinks, biting down on a strange kind of sharpness in her mouth. _Lowers the ol’ inhibitions. Makes her play nice with folks instead of threatening them. Nothing deeper than that, right?_

She lingers in the doorway a moment or two, painfully aware of the fact that she doesn’t belong here, that she’s ventured into a world that wasn’t made for her. This is a place for men, and for women like Janice who think like men, folks with big shoulders and bad attitudes; Mel has never set foot in a bar like this her whole darn life, and the look on her face probably makes it real obvious. Suddenly, that sensible skirt feels painfully tight, and she’s very, very aware of all the substances lying around that could ruin a clean white shirt.

Janice doesn’t notice her at all. She’s too busy talking to her new-or-possibly-old friend. Mel wants to storm over there, drag her out of here, and give her a nice big lecture about irresponsible drinking and socialising. She wants to haul her away from this sleazy bar, away from this backwoods town, away from _him_ …

It’s a silly feeling, and a ridiculous thing to want to do. Mel’s never been the type to make a scene, not once in her life, but _Lord_ if she’s not suddenly drowning in pretty, pretty visions of doing just that. She only came down here to talk a little bit, to tell Janice that she doesn’t want to be alone all night up in that room. She didn’t come here to check up on her, or to cluck over her like a mother hen. She’d never want to to ruin her fun, not when fun is a gift that comes so rarely to her; it’s just that the sight of her sitting there all smiling and friendly, chatting away with some near-perfect stranger, some maybe-old-friend, someone who isn’t _her_ …

 _Oh, darn it all,_ she thinks, and all the good intentions in the world can’t stop her from tossing away her shame and crossing to her side.

Janice catches sight of her before she’s even halfway across the room. Well, little surprise there, Mel figures; she probably sticks out like a sore thumb among all these rough-and-ready men and boys and… well, _Janice_. She stands straighter than all of them put together, taller than all but the toughest, and she’s not exactly subtle in the way she storms over with her hands on her hips and her glasses pushed right up her nose, like someone’s grandma stopping by to break up an illicit party.

“Mel?” Janice’s voice is maybe an octave lower than usual, like she can’t figure out whether to be angry or just plain confused. Blessedly, at least for the time being, she opts for the latter. “Something wrong with the room?”

That would make for a real convenient explanation, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, Mel’s not much of a quick thinker in the heat of the moment like this, and she’s shaking her head before the thought even enters her mind that it might have been the smarter route to just nod.

“Nothing like that,” she manages, and immediately wants to yank her foot out of her mouth. “I just…”

_Well, heck. I just missed you, that’s all._

But she can’t very well say that, now, can she?

Janice is staring at her, mouth twisting into a grimace. “Just what?”

“Uh…” She looks around, desperately searching for a scapegoat, but there’s nothing here but drinks and drunks. Neither of those things are a particularly viable option, given her upbringing and what Janice knows of it, but she can’t seem to stop herself from blurting out, “Just… figured I’d stop by for a nightcap, of course.”

Well, she can’t rightly blame Janice for gawking at her after that. It’s not exactly convincing.

“You’re kidding, right?” Janice asks, when she’s done staring.

Mel opens and closes her mouth for what feels like an eternity. Lucky for her, she doesn’t get a chance to dig herself out; before she even gets a word out, Janice’s new (or possibly old) friend cuts in to save her neck with a big, bright grin.

“This a friend of yours?” he asks Janice, elbowing her none too gently in the ribs.

“Depends on the day,” Janice mutters, eyes never leaving Mel.

Her friend laughs, loud and long. His voice is like gravel, rough and hard, but his eyes are warm; there’s no threat in him at all, just good humour and a kind of paternal teasing. Seeing him up close, Mel decides she doesn’t hate him quite as much as she thought she would. Obviously, that’s just a question of judgement, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he just swooped in to rescue her from certain humiliation.

“How ’bout an introduction?” he presses.

Janice grunts, looking suddenly very uncomfortable. “No point,” she says, and her eyes get real hard when they lock on Mel’s. “She won’t be sticking around more than a minute. Ain’t that _right_ , Mel?”

Mel has to swallow real hard just to get her mouth to open again. She looks from Janice to her friend and back again, wondering whether they can see her heart hammering in her chest. Between the tiny pouting archaeologist and the gigantic bear-sized fella with tree-trunks for arms, it’s no question at all which one she finds the more terrifying.

“Uh,” she squeaks. “Well… that is…”

“Nonsense!” Janice’s friend, seemingly not content simply to break the poor woman’s ribs with his elbow, thwacks her on the back too, so hard that she nearly falls off her barstool. “Pull up a chair, little missy, and we’ll have us a party!”

Mel turns helplessly to Janice. “Well… uh… I mean… if Janice don’t mind…”

“Of course she doesn’t!” he crows, flashing a grin that could melt butter.

Janice is glaring daggers at them both. “Believe me,” she grits out, “she _does_.”

*

Turns out he is a friend of Janice’s daddy, after all.

Well, _was_. Janice’s eyes get real dark and her face goes kind of pale any time one of them mentions his name, so they both stop for her sake. Mel wants to touch her, squeeze her hand or brush her face, but she keeps a safe distance because it feels wrong and strange, like the sort of thing they maybe shouldn’t do in public. She’s not really sure why it feels that way all of a sudden, but it does.

Anyhow. A friend of Harry Covington’s, that makes him a friend of Janice’s by proxy, and a heck of a showman to boot. He gestures real big when he talks, kind of theatrical-like, so it’s all kinds of fitting that he introduces himself as ‘Tybalt’. Mel kind of doubts that’s his real name, all things considered, but he acts like it is, and far be it from her to cast shadows on someone’s identity.

“Like Shakespeare?” she asks instead, because of course that’s the pressing question.

He shrugs, good-natured and not above letting someone else get a laugh at his expense. “Guess my mother was a secret romantic,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye.

Given what she knows of that particular play and that particular character, Mel suspects it’s probably the opposite: no doubt his mama was a whip-smart woman who recognised a future troublemaker in her newborn babe, and picked out the kind of name that said _‘watch out for this one’_. Still, she nods and smiles, and pretends she doesn’t notice the way Janice is staring at the two of them with a blank, baffled look on her face, like she’s secretly wondering who the heck this Shakespeare person is.

It’s about the last thing Mel would expect from her, that kind of a hole in her education, but given her upbringing she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Raised by a wandering archaeologist, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Janice’s expertise begins and ends with ancient history; little wonder she doesn’t know very much about literature when she’s literally spent her whole life in various holes in the ground. Still, Mel can’t help feeling a little vindicated by the look on her face; she’s always so quick to throw that doctorate of hers in Mel’s face just to win an argument, but here she is, never even heard of the Bard.

Mel doesn’t point any of that out, though, and Janice is too darn proud to ask the question she clearly wants to. She’s not too proud to glare, though, and that’s a gift she bears real well. “You’re both idiots,” she mutters, though it’s only Mel she’s staring at.

Not one for taking offence, Mel only shrugs. “Well, now,” she says, “I reckon that goes without saying.”

Janice glares even harder, but Tybalt laughs like an earthquake.

“You’ve not changed a bit,” he says to Janice. “Still the same jumped-up little bit of a thing who thinks she’s bigger than she is.”

“Shut up.”

Tybalt gives her another shattering clap on the back, then turns to Mel with mischief in his eyes. “Never had any manners,” he tells her. “Even when she was a kid. Knee-high on a grasshopper, and she’d swear blind she could knock me down.”

“Well, I could,” Janice grumbles, more to herself than anyone else. “Then _and_ now.”

Tybalt laughs again. Mel’s starting to think she might like this fella. At the very least, she appreciates the stuff he can tell her about Janice, the stuff she knows Janice would never yield on her own.

“Now, don’t go underestimating her,” she says, mostly just to get back on Janice’s good side. “She’s real tough when she wants to be.”

Janice looks slightly mollified. Just slightly, mind, but at least it’s a start. “Damn straight,” she grunts, and if Mel didn’t know better she’d swear she caught a flash of gratitude in those steel-hard eyes of hers. “She knows me.”

It’s a simple statement, cool and careless and clearly intended more to underline the point than to flatter her, but still somehow it strikes deep. Mel doesn’t expect the wave of feeling that crashes over her, that strange kicking in her chest surging up all over again into something she can’t control; for a second or two she finds she can’t catch her breath.

 _She knows me._ Syllable by syllable, it’s not so simple at all. It’s weighted, meaningful, and Mel is sure the sharp edges of Janice’s face soften ever so slightly as she says it, like some part of her is thinking of those little moments when she’s unconscious, when Mel calms her just by talking to her, when she’s thrashing about and yelling in her sleep and Mel’s the only one allowed to see it.

 _I do know you,_ Mel thinks, awed by how deep the feeling goes. _I’m the only one in the whole darn world who knows what you sound like when you’re dreaming._

Maybe that’s not exactly true. Neither one of them are a babe in arms, and Mel doesn’t rightly know what other company Janice has kept in her life. Maybe some other soul out there knew her this well; maybe some other gal or fella got to hold her through her dreams some time long since past. Maybe. But looking at her now, Mel kind of doubts it.

Tybalt is studying them both with a cool look on his face, curiosity without judgement. “Does she, now…” he murmurs, and it’s not a question.

Janice huffs, acknowledging but not denying. If Mel didn’t know better, she’d swear there was a touch of colour creeping up the back of her neck.

“Don’t change the subject,” she says, a little too fast and with just a splash of urgency. “I thought we were talking about me, not her.”

“Nah,” he says. He’s pushing her buttons, Mel realises, trying to goad her into a fight. She’s not sure why, but if he knows Janice even half as well as she does he has to know he’s poking at bees. “Nothing much to say about you. You talk a big game, kiddo, but you’re still the same little half-pint I remember yapping at her daddy’s heels.”

Janice’s eyes are locked on Mel, burning hot. “The hell I am.”

“Well, then.” He waits for her to look away, to turn and catch his eye instead, then winks and cocks his head towards the bar. “How ’bout putting your money where your mouth is?”

Janice follows his gaze. Her lips get real thin, pale when she licks across them, and Mel can’t seem to take her eyes off the flash of her tongue.

“What’re you suggesting?” Janice asks, though the tone of her voice makes it clear that she already knows.

Tybalt grins, teeth as sharp as his sense of humour. “A little friendly _competition_ ,” he says, laying a whole lot of weight on that last word. “What do you say? Got the stomach for it?”

All of a sudden Mel is the one who doesn’t understand what’s happening. Just a moment ago, it was Janice staring at them like she never heard the name Shakespeare before, but now Mel’s the one floundering to make sense of this strange shared language. She can tell from the look on both their faces that it’s something she wouldn’t approve of, a challenge thrown down that’ll probably end in blood or worse, but she’ll be darned if she can figure out what the heck it is.

Tybalt knows how to push Janice’s buttons; that much is obvious. He’s got a smiling, easy kind of charm, and he has to know how easy it is to make her angry by looking at her like that; he has to know that she won’t back down from any kind of challenge, least of all from someone who’d dare to call her small. Janice, meanwhile, is popping her shoulders and her jaw like she does sometimes when she’s gunning for a fight, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’d let herself get beaten to a pulp before she’d ever back down.

As for Mel… well, she might not have the faintest idea what’s going on right now, but she’s pretty certain she wants nothing to do with it.

Janice turns to look at her, a brief glance that speaks volumes. There’s an odd kind of expression on her face under all the bravado and the tension; it’s not exactly vulnerable, but it’s surprisingly close, like a part of her is asking for something Mel doesn’t know how to give. Respect, maybe, or something that cuts deeper even than that. It’s only a moment, that look shared between them, but while she’s got Janice’s eyes locked on hers Mel can’t help feeling like maybe this isn’t really about proving herself to some old friend, like maybe it’s secretly somehow about her instead.

Mel doesn’t know what to feel about that. She doesn’t want Janice doing anything foolish on her account, but _Lord_ if it doesn’t make her belly feel real warm, the idea that she might want to.

It’s a brief, heavily-weighted moment before Janice pulls herself away and turns back to her old friend. She cracks her knuckles, flashes her teeth, and the fire in her eyes makes Mel want to run away and hide. It’s strong, not in the way that Janice is always strong, but in a new, different way, strong like survival, strong like someone with something prove and something to fight for, strong and powerful and…

…and _beautiful_.

“Bring it on,” she says to her friend, and Mel’s heart stops dead in her chest.

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

She’s not sure what kind of ‘friendly competition’ she’s expecting, but she seriously doubts ‘friendly’ will be the operative word.

Most likely, she’s bracing for a good old-fashioned brawl, the kind that comes with flipped tables and smashed glasses, the kind that wouldn’t be out of place in an Old West paperback. Janice’s temper is a monster of its own making, a wild and sharp-toothed beast that even she can’t properly tame most of the time. Mel can see well enough that there’s no real animosity between her and her daddy’s old friend, that this is just a kind of good-natured rivalry thing, but that’s never stopped her pulling her whip out on someone before. Heck, half the time, it makes her _more_ likely, because she knows the unlucky fella won’t take it too personal.

That doesn’t happen this time, though. There’s no whips, no guns, no shattered glass or flipped tables. Heck, there’s not even a raised fist between them. For maybe half a second, Mel wonders if she misread the room, if she was imagining the challenge thrown down, the fire in Janice’s eye, the way she looked at her when she accepted.

She didn’t, of course. There’s not a gal alive naïve enough to misread that. It’s just not quite the kind of competition someone like Mel would ever see coming.

Janice swings to her feet, leaning right over the bar and balancing on her toes. She’s got an angry, feral look in her eye, close to ferocious as she waves down the bartender. Mel recognises that look all too well; Janice usually gets it when her truck stalls or she comes back empty-handed after a long, exhausting dig. It’s the kind of look that warns her to back off or get burned, and for a fleeting, foolish moment she almost pities the poor barkeep.

He scurries over quick as a flash, no doubt used to rowdy patrons and their short fuses. Janice flashes her teeth, flips him a coin, and says, “Line ’em up.”

Mel opens her mouth to ask some kind soul to fill her in on what the heck is going on, but she doesn’t get the chance. The answer hits her like a avalanche, clear as day as the bartender does what he’s told, rummaging obediently behind the bar and whipping out a neat row of little shot glasses. Mel gawks for about half a second, and then the question on her lips reshapes itself into a very, very different one.

“Are you out of your ever-loving _mind_ , Janice Covington?”

Janice doesn’t even glance her way. Of course she doesn’t; she knows too well what would happen if she did. “Leave it alone, Mel…”

Mel, of course, does no such thing. Frankly, she’s halfway tempted to just grab Janice by the ear and haul her out of the bar like a disobedient child. It’s a pleasant mental image, and again her common-sense voice is telling her that it’s Janice’s own fault for acting like a kid if she ends up treated that way, but somehow she can’t quite bring herself to do it. Deserved though she knows it would be, she can still see that hint of almost-vulnerability flickering behind her eyes, hidden from everyone, it seems, except her.

“Well, now,” she says, softening just a little, “I’d love to walk away and let you drink yourself silly. But wasn’t it only but a few hours ago you were running your mouth about not throwing money away?”

Janice flushes darker than Mel’s ever seen her. For a second or two she assumes it’s just embarrassment, shame at getting caught in her irresponsibility; she’s about halfway through thinking _well, it serves you right_ , when Tybalt launches into another burst of loud, raucous laughter. Janice’s face blanches from red to white in less than a second, and it hits Mel like a blow that this isn’t about embarrassment at all. She’s not ashamed, she realises; she’s _furious_.

“Ha!” Apparently her daddy’s old friend isn’t too good at feeling the mood of a room, because he’s still laughing like this is the funniest darn thing he’s ever seen. “Don’t I remember you telling me you’d never end up like that?”

He doesn’t mean _‘that’_ , Mel can tell. He means _‘him’_.

Janice is spluttering now, spitting mad. Mel doesn’t know why this is so personal all of a sudden, but she knows things are real complicated between Janice and her memories of her daddy. She loved him like crazy, but there’s a part of her that struggles so hard with being his daughter, stuck in his not-so-pretty shadow. Mel hasn’t really asked about it because she doesn’t want a fist in her face, but she knows it gets all kinds of messy inside Janice’s head when she thinks about it too long and too hard.

Tybalt’s playing on that, poking at her insecurities like a cat with a string, working to get a rise out of her, to see how far he can goad her. He’s not doing it out of unkindness, Mel can tell, but one look at Janice’s face tells her that’s not much comfort. It still hurts, she can tell, and the sight of her face, all twisted up in pain and rage, makes Mel want to take her away from all of this this and wrap her up in something warm.

“Janice…” she starts, but of course that’s as far as she can get.

Janice silences her with a glare. She’s got one hand braced on the bar, and she grabs one of the little shot glasses with the other, squeezing it until Mel worries there will be damages after all. Better the glass, she supposes, than the poor fella’s head, but still.

“Shut up,” Janice says. The glass trembles just a little as she raises it up to her mouth, eyes shooting fire as they lock on Mel’s. “Anyone who’s not drinking doesn’t get to talk.”

And without another word, she knocks the darn thing back.

*

It’s not pretty.

Mel should’ve anticipated that. Janice’s pride is an ugly thing at the best of times, but combined with too much liquor and an old friend who knows exactly the right buttons to press it becomes something frightening, all tangled up and terrible, knotted and gnarled inside of her. Mel wants to try and soothe it, to reach out and touch her hand, her shoulder, her face, to remind her of how nice things were just a few short hours ago, when it was just the two of them, but she doesn’t. One look at Janice’s face tells her that if she so much as tries she’ll find herself with one less hand to touch with, and probably one less tongue to speak with.

As to the ‘competition’… _well_. Mel’s never seen a real honest-to-goodness drinking contest before. She’s heard about them, of course — whatever Janice might think about her, she’s more than some sheltered little plantation gal who doesn’t know her rear end from her elbow — but seeing it in person is a whole different thing, and she has no idea what to make of it all.

It’s a surprisingly civilised affair, Janice’s brittle temper notwithstanding. The bartender clears a table for the thing, keeps the drinks lined up all neat and clean, and before Mel has even pieced together the rules of the thing — last one standing wins, pretty much — there’s a big ol’ crowd gathering all around them. Looking about, Mel can’t help wondering if this is about the only kind of entertainment folks get in this town; it sure as heck seems to be, given how eager some of them are to pay for round after round. _So much for tossing away money,_ Mel thinks, impressed in spite of herself by Janice’s foresight.

(Not that she _approves_ , of course… but there’s no denying it’s resourceful.)

Janice drinks like she does everything else: hard and fast and with just a pinch of violence. She downs her shots like she’s throwing punches in a boxing ring, then slams the empty glasses face-down on the table like they did her wrong. She does it with such force, such bone-shaking ferocity that Mel starts to fret again about broken glass and furniture. She doesn’t intervene — she doesn’t trust Janice not to do something she’ll regret if she dares to speak — but yeah, she’s worried.

Tybalt, by contrast, drinks like a gentleman. He’s slower, more careful-like, even as he knocks them back just as easy; it doesn’t take a pro to know that he’s done this sort of thing before, that he’s got experience under his belt. No doubt Janice has her share of that stuff, too — she never drinks when they’re working, of course, but Mel’s heard her talk about it with the heady fondness of someone who enjoys it maybe more than they rightly should — but it’s pretty clear she’s either out of practice or just plain outmatched. Given the situation, maybe a little bit of both.

Of course, neither of those things ever stopped her before, and they sure as heck don’t stop her now. She goes at it like she has something to prove, something deeper than anyone else can see; it makes Mel kind of sad, seeing her like this, because it happens so darn often. She’s always got some silly point to make, something to prove that she thinks is the end of the world. Even when it’s all just in her head, when it’s the two of them alone in that truck and Mel doesn’t care at all what Janice does or doesn’t do, even when there’s no-one around for miles upon miles. Even then, she’ll act like this, looking away and hunching her shoulders, clenching her jaw and pretending she’s indestructible. She has to know, has to realise that Mel’s seen the truth of it, but still she pretends her dreams don’t break her.

Mel wonders how much of that liquor she’d need to knock back before she’s sloshed enough to tell the truth.

From the look of her, they’ll know the answer before too long. It’s strange, watching her start to struggle, shuddering a little more with each new shot. Mel is used to seeing Janice at her toughest, her most untouchable, and it’s a strange, different thing to see her trailing behind someone tougher than she is. Usually she has her would-be opponents regretting it in less than a minute. No doubt she expected the same thing this time.

Mel’s not really sure she expected it herself, to be frank. She might not know too much about liquor, but she knows that it has to go somewhere, and there’s a whole lot more space on a fella as big and broad as Tybalt than a tiny little thing like Janice. Janice has a talent for pretty much anything she puts her hand to, patience notwithstanding, but biologically speaking she was at a disadvantage before she even got started. She’s a heck of a firecracker, though, and she’s got that stubborn pride thing working in her favour; it helps more than Mel expects, keeping her back straight and her lips real thin when she swallows.

The empty glasses pile up real fast. Mel makes a move to clear some of them away, but she gets swatted down so fast it’s a miracle she doesn’t lose a few fingers. Janice glares at her, eyes lidded and hazy, and Mel wants to wave a hand in front of her face, to see if she’s still alive in there.

“You okay?” she asks instead, because it’s fractionally less dangerous.

Janice swallows. Not a drink or anything, she just swallows. Her mouth is very wet, Mel notices, and has to force herself to stop staring.

“Just fine,” Janice says after a moment. Her voice is very thick, but at least the words are legible. “Just… _hell_.”

Mel bites back a sigh, frowns down at the rows of upside-down empties. “Looks like we’ll be sticking around for another day or so,” she remarks. “There’s no way on God’s clean Earth I’m letting you in that truck tomorrow.”

Janice snorts. It sounds like she’s trying to laugh. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “You can drive.”

That’s proof enough, Mel figures, that she’s pretty well gone. She’s real particular about that truck of hers, and the only time she ever lets Mel into the driving seat is when she’s had a rough night and desperately needs the sleep; she’s stubborn, sure, but she’s seldom stupid about it, and she’ll put her ego to the side when it comes to things like road safety. Grudgingly, sure, but she’ll do it if she thinks she has to.

This isn’t quite like that, though. Those times, she’s cranky and tired and just wants to take a nap; now, she’s a live wire of tension and anger and hurt; she’s burning with the need to prove herself, the need to show that she doesn’t need anyone or anything to hold her hand, and Mel was halfway expecting that she’d have to prise the keys out of her hands.

It’s a surprise, if a pleasant one, that at least right now she’s willing to concede, and Mel can’t quite keep herself from blurting out, “You trust me with it?”

Janice’s eyes get real dark for a second or two, then they slide closed completely. She’s swaying in her seat, flushed and a little sweaty, but she’s still there, at least for the most part. When she opens her eyes again after a long dizzy moment, the darkness is all but gone and there’s something else there, something that brings out a few of the countless colours Mel knows are in them, and in her.

“Yeah,” she whispers, hoarse but not slurring. “I trust you, Mel.”

Mel can’t help herself; she’s pretty sure it’s breaking a rule somewhere, but she leans in anyway, touches Janice’s face with real warmth, the kind Janice would never let her get away with if she was sober.

“Do you?” she asks, and she’s not talking about the truck.

Janice opens her mouth to answer, but the words don’t come out. What does come out is a terrible sound, a sort of spluttering gagging thing, like something is stuck in her throat. The last drink, probably, or else the humiliation of letting herself show sentiment for more than half a second. One or the other.

Whatever the cause, it makes her splutter again, then cough, and Mel really doesn’t know how these situations are supposed work but she’s pretty sure that sound means _choking_.

She scrambles for the bartender, begs for a glass of water. He fetches one as dutifully as he’s fetched all of their drinks thus far, but without the urgency she thinks the situation calls for. Apparently this is the sort of thing that just happens in places like this; nobody else is batting an eyelid at all, but Mel’s heart is right in her throat, and she can hear her voice getting high and squeaky. She hasn’t felt this out of control since she was a kid.

Janice chokes a few more times, a guttural strangled noise like a dying animal, then slowly, _slowly_ seems to come back to herself. She’s still red-faced, still spluttering, but at least she can breathe now, which is more than Mel can say for herself. She puts the water on the table in front of her, urges Janice to swallow some, but Janice just stares at it like… well, like Mel stares at her revolver in the middle of the night, most likely. Like it’s something evil.

“The hell’s that for?” Speaking pulls a few more spluttering coughs out of her, but that doesn’t temper her scowl any. “This look like a quilting bee to you, sweetheart?”

Mel claps a hand over her face. If it were anyone else sitting in front of her, she wouldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You were… that is… well, I mean…”

“It was nothing,” Janice snaps. She takes another moment or two to recover herself, then shoves the water away with rather more violence than it needs; the stuff sloshes over the side of the glass, pooling on the table. “Christ, Mel, if a little coughing fit is enough to get you all flustered and scared, you sure as hell better sit out the rest.”

“Well, now, I’d hardly call it a ‘little coughing fit’…” Mel says.

“That’s your problem,” Janice says, sharp now that she’s got a little of her composure back. “I’m just getting warmed up. Finding my stride.” Mel bites her tongue to keep from pointing out that she’s been pretty well ‘warmed up’ for a good half-hour or more. “If you can’t handle it, get out of here.”

Mel is sorely tempted to do exactly that. Just turn around while she still can, go back to that tiny little room Janice so kindly procured for her, crawl into bed and make believe she won’t be spending the whole night fretting. They’re all grown-ups here, or at least they’re darn good at pretending they are; why should she sit around worried over someone who obviously thinks she knows what she’s doing? Mel is sure as heck not Janice’s mother, and even if she were she doubts it’d make a blind bit of difference. Might as well just cut her losses and go some place with a little more sanity and a lot less noise.

She should. She really, really should. And she’s about two breaths away from turning around and doing it when she sees the look on Janice’s face.

Janice’s mouth might be telling her to leave, but those darn eyes of hers are saying something else completely, a kind of desperation bleeding through the liquor clouds and wounded pride.

 _Don’t,_ her eyes are saying. _I know what I said, but I didn’t really mean it. Please, Mel, please don’t make me do this without you._

Had she not spent the last couple of nights dealing with Janice’s dreams, Mel might not recognise the words hidden under the look. She might believe that Janice Covington isn’t capable of such a thing. But she’s seen it before, in those moments when she’s asleep, when there’s salt on her skin and pain in her throat, when she’s unconscious and unable to silence herself with false bravado. It’s the same thing now, exactly the same, only in the cruel light of day she won’t let herself say it out loud.

Mel feels lost for a moment, like the ground has shifted underneath her and she’s got nothing to hold on to. She doesn’t know why Janice cares that she’s here, why it’s so darn important that she sit this through with her, but for some silly reason it is. Maybe it’s the drink, or else maybe it’s the presence of someone who knew her daddy, the shadows of the past stretching out to shake her bones; whatever it is, the look on her face is begging just as surely as she does in her dreams, carving through her cold words like a bullet through water. It sends a thrill through Mel too, a wash of something she’s never felt before.

Funny, the way that happens. Janice is the one with half her body weight in liquor swimming inside of her, but suddenly it’s Mel who’s swaying, reaching out to grab the edge of the table, fighting to keep from falling over. Funny how seeing Janice helpless seems to make her feel exactly the same way.

It’s not the first time. That look on Janice’s face, Mel’s throat getting parched at the sight of it, the whole sorry thing. Janice really isn’t big on weakness, on letting anyone see her vulnerable, but Mel gets to see a lot of things no-one else does. She’s seen her up to her neck in sand and dirt, cursing, on the brink of tears because a week-long dig turned up empty. She’s seen her six hours into a seemingly endless drive, hands trembling on the wheel because she’s desperate for a smoke but she refuses to give in and stop. She’s seen her first thing in the morning and last thing at night, has seen her with a mouthful of jerky and seen her spit water gone toxic from the heat. She’s seen her dream, and she’s seen her beg, and all those things seem to come together right now, all burning away in the face of _this_.

Even surrounded as they are by people, bartenders and big drinkers and old family friends, still it feels like a kind of intimacy, like they’re both standing here buck naked. Mel isn’t easily left without words, but _Lord_ if she can’t find a one in her right now.

Blessedly, she doesn’t have to. Janice’s friend Tybalt, apparently peeved by the delay, leans in across the table and gives Janice’s shoulder a wake-up shake.

“Hate to break up the ladies’ night,” he quips, sounding maddeningly sober, “but are we drinkin’ or yappin’?”

Janice looks at Mel, jaw tight and eyes hard. There’s something hidden deep under the surface of the scowl, a wordless plea to just try and understand, or at least to keep her mouth shut if she can’t manage that. It’s not exactly a challenge; Mel’s not sure she could speak anyway.

She feels suspended, like maybe she’s had a bit to drink as well, as though that can happen from breathing it in or standing too close to someone with breath like a brewery. Funny how that just makes her want to stand a bit closer, makes her want to lean right in and find out just how that stuff really tastes. Funny how it makes her knees get weak again, how it makes her whole body seize up like it did when she thought Janice was choking. Funny how all she can think of is the way Janice licks her lips right after she takes a shot.

She shakes her head in hopes of shaking off the thought.

Janice studies her for a long moment, like she can sense all that even though she hasn’t said a word. Her eyes don’t give anything away, but they get real clear real fast, like the sight of Mel’s face helps her to sober up some, like it brings the world back into some kind of focus.

“Drinking,” she says, in response to Tybalt. Her voice is high, but solid as a rock. “We’re drinking.”

She finds Mel’s hand, squeezes it, then reaches for a glass.

*

She gets a kind of second wind after that.

Well, sort of. At the very least, her pride seems to have dropped along with her inhibitions, and she stops being so coy about leaning on Mel when she needs a little support. She’s not exactly subtle about it, gripping her arm like a lifeline when the swallowing gets hard, or turning to press her face against her neck when she starts to lose control of herself. Mel can’t deny that it warms her, and not just because the liquor has turned Janice’s skin into a furnace.

It’s so unlike her, seeking out support like this, and so strange to see her do it when she’s conscious. Well, mostly conscious, anyhow; Mel’s not sure how long that’ll last, going by the look of her, but for now at least she knows what she’s doing. It’s a far cry from the way she does it when she’s dreaming, it when she’s unconscious can deny it in the morning. Sure as anything, Mel won’t let her get away with doing that this time.

They’ve been going for what feels like a lifetime when Janice moves in to lean against Mel’s shoulder again, and misses. All of a sudden her flushed, warm face is pressed right against Mel’s cheek, and all of a sudden Mel can feel every part of her. Janice is blinking rapidly, eyelids fluttering against her skin, and the twitch in her throat is sharp against Mel’s jaw, violent as she forces down some kind of spasm.

Mel hasn’t said anything for a long time now. She hasn’t felt the need to, and in any case she hasn’t wanted to be too much of a distraction; Janice would never let her hear the end of it if she thought Mel had cost her a victory. She wants to keep quiet even now, but she can feel the tremors rippling through every part of Janice’s body, pressed against her as it is, and it’s more than she can do to keep her mouth shut when she knows she’s faltering. She eases Janice upright, cups her face in her hands to keep her steady while she sways, and finds her eyes.

Janice’s are really, really cloudy now, so much that they’re almost not hers at all; Mel pierces the veil as best she can, and whispers, “Hey.”

“Hey.” Janice blinks a couple of times, bleary and dizzy, then forgets to open her eyes again. “How…” She swallows. “How’s the old bastard doing?”

Mel cuts a glance across the table, unsurprised by the answer that awaits her. Tybalt is swaying a little too — anyone would be, Mel figures, after how much they’ve had between them — but he’s got himself under control much better than Janice does. There’s a silly, lopsided grin on his face, but he clearly knows what he’s doing, and when Mel takes a moment to size him up he actually has the audacity to throw her a thumbs-up. He knows he’s got this thing won.

Well, sure, admittedly it doesn’t take a genius to figure that part out, given Janice’s less than stellar condition, but somehow the inevitability of it doesn’t stop Mel feeling strangely spiteful.

She’s not sure where the feeling comes from. She’s not usually the kind of gal who’d get all vindictive and petty over someone else’s fight. Heck, she’s never been that kind of gal. But for some fool reason, this silly battle of wills means something to Janice, and the sight of her stumbling like this rends Mel’s heart completely. It makes her want to do something unkind, maybe kick the chair out from under that smirking son of a gun and send him crashing to the floor. She’d do that and worse, if she thought for a second it would win Janice her dignity back.

She doesn’t, though. That’d be unladylike, and probably against some rule or another. Not that she really knows what the rules are in this primitive little game of theirs. They talk about being the last man standing, but so far as she can tell neither one of them has been standing for quite some time. Frankly, Mel has long since given up trying to make sense of it all, and in any case that’s not the dang point.

The point, at least right now, is that Tybalt probably has at least three or four shots left in him, and Janice… well, bless her poor deluded soul, she surely does not.

The answer is simple, then, or at least it should be. _Give it up,_ she needs to say. _You’re never gonna win this thing, so quit this foolishness while you’ve still got something left between your ears._ She wants to say it, wants to save Janice the humiliation of flat-out losing this silly little competition that means so much to her. She wants to give her a chance to walk out of this thing with her head somewhere other than flat on the floor.

She opens her mouth to say it, to break the news with as much kindness as she has in her, but then she makes the mistake of looking at Janice’s face one last time, and common sense quits her entirely. It’s only right, she thinks to herself, that she looks the poor gal in the eye when she tells her to give up and go home, but _dear Lord_ , she didn’t anticipate the heat and the hope she finds waiting for her there.

 _I gotta do this,_ Janice is saying, pleading without words. _God help me, Mel, I gotta do this._

Mel doesn’t understand why. She’ll never understand why. She’ll never understand Janice’s obsession, her drive, her desperation to always be the biggest and the toughest and the best. She’ll never understand the passion and pride she sees on Janice’s face every time she feels challenged or threatened, the tension in her shoulders when she’s hunched and defensive and violent. She’ll never understand how Janice’s mind works at all, why silly little things seem to mean the whole darn world to her, why she’d willingly put herself into a coma just to prove herself for a second in front of a fella she’ll be leaving in the dust come tomorrow. Even if she spends the rest of her life trying, Mel will never, ever understand Janice Covington.

But here and now, seeing that desperate, broken look on her face, she realises it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have to understand; she just has to do what’s right.

“You did great,” she says, though she knows that won’t ever be enough for a gal like Janice. It’s not enough that she’s good or great or anything else; she has to be the darn best. “You made your point, you hear? You made it.”

Janice wets her lips, not that they really need it. “I did?” She knits her brows, like she’s trying to frown but can’t remember how. “He down yet?”

Mel glances back at Tybalt, the question on her lips. He’s watching the interplay with the unburdened carelessness of someone who knows they’ll be victorious one way or another. It don’t much matter to him, Mel can tell, how it comes about, just as long as it does in the end. She wonders if he didn’t quite realise when he started this little game, just how vast and delicate Janice’s ego is, just what kind of powder keg he lit up in challenging her like this.

Maybe he does, at that, because Mel doesn’t even need to ask the question; he’s already shrugging and nodding like he’s heard every thought in her head. He knows he’s won, and he don’t gotta prove it to someone who’s practically unconscious anyway; he’s content to let Mel make it easier on Janice, let her placate the poor woman with a carefully-told lie. Mel doesn’t even need to ask; he’s already shrugging and grinning and waving her off.

“Go ahead,” he says, not even slurring a bit. “Ain’t like she’ll remember in the morning anyhow.”

Mel wonders if he’s ever actually met Janice Covington, or her stubborn pride. For her part, she’d put good money on Janice remembering every last detail and turning it into a grudge. Still, that’s a conversation for tomorrow, when she’s at least a little more sober, and it’s a darn sight better than trying to find the closest hospital in the middle of the night. It’s a cross she’ll gladly bear, now if not later.

Janice whines, annoyed by Mel’s extended silence, and Mel leans in to touch her face. She’s warm from the liquor, but that heat feels like a chill next to the fire she catches in her eyes.

“ _Mel_ ,” she whines, and Mel wants nothing more than to hold her close and never let go.

“Yeah,” she says, soft and sweet and for Janice’s ears only. “Yeah, Janice, he’s down.”

The sound that comes out of Janice is something she’s pretty sure she’s never heard from another human being. It’s a shuddering, wrenching sort of sound, so desperate that Mel can barely make out the words between the whimpers.

“I won?” she’s asking, not just once but again and again. “I won?”

Across the table, Tybalt shakes his head. For the first time, he’s not laughing. “Sure, kid,” he says. “You won.”

Janice beams. It’s about the most beautiful thing Mel’s ever seen.

“I _won_ ,” she says, and promptly passes out.

*

Mel has no idea what to do with an unconscious, snoring drunk.

Blessedly, Tybalt does. For someone who’s downed at least as many shots as Janice has, he’s got a remarkable handle on his faculties and common sense. The bar’s all but empty by now, the last of the stragglers filtering out not long after Janice’s not-so-graceful defeat, and he’s settled her down in a quiet little corner. There’s a strange sort of fondness in the way he fusses over her, rearranging her limbs until he’s sure she’s comfortable and safe, and it’s only once he’s sure she won’t hurt herself that he wanders back to the bar.

The bartender isn’t nearly so friendly now as he was at the beginning; good business or no, it’s late as anything and Mel supposes the poor fella just wants to get home to bed; he’s none too thrilled with Tybalt’s request for a pitcher of water and something ‘dead and deep-fried’.

“Let her sleep it off a while,” he says, when he catches Mel staring at Janice. “You can take her home after she comes around. Shouldn’t be too long.”

Mel nods, uncomfortable and uneasy. Janice doesn’t seem to be in any obvious danger — heck, if the truth be told she’s a darn sight more restful now than she is when she’s sleeping naturally — but Mel’s painfully aware of how much she’s had to drink, and if the last few weeks of digging and driving have taught her anything it’s to always anticipate the worst when it comes to Janice Covington and her terrible ideas.

“She gonna be okay?” she asks. She doesn’t mean to sound as tender as she does, or as caring. “She drank a _lot_.”

Tybalt chuckles. He grabs the water pitcher as soon as it arrives and gulps down a full glass of the stuff before answering. “Can’t vouch for the next few hours,” he says with a knowing grin. “But she’ll be just fine once she’s sobered up some. You can trust me on that. Jan might not be the smartest bullet in the mag, but she knows her limits. Well, most of the time, anyhow.” His expression softens just a little, and he refills his water glass. “If she learned one good thing from her dad, it’d be that.”

Mel thinks a spell on that. “You know her pretty good, huh?”

“As good as anyone else, I suppose.” The words come out garbled; he’s already halfway down his second glass. “She ain’t exactly the kind of girl anyone really _knows_ , if you get my drift. Growing up like she did…” He sighs, almost regretful, then pushes the water away. “Now, don’t get me wrong, Harry was real good with her. Best intentions in the world. But hell, it’s no kind of life for a kid, is it? All that running around, no idea where your next meal’s coming from. There ain’t many who wouldn’t turn out mean after all that.”

The thought is a sobering one, and deeply sad. Mel has never really let herself wonder what Janice was like as a kid, what all that flitting about with an obsessive, fixated archaeologist might do to someone too young to really understand what it’s all about. She knows that Janice’s mama left them a long time ago, and she knows that Janice still worships the ground her daddy walked on, even now. He was her whole reason for being, and it’s no secret that she built herself up in his image. That’s the obvious stuff, though; Mel’s never really tried to look any deeper. Digging is Janice’s thing, not hers.

She digs now, though. Looking at her now, lying there in the corner with her mouth open and body limp as she sleeps off one bad decision too many, it’s hard not to picture her as someone much, much younger, a wide-eyed little slip of a thing with the whole world stretched out like a promise in front of her.

“Guess she had to grow up fast,” she murmurs, mostly to herself.

Tybalt nods. The smiles and the laughter are long gone from him now, leaving behind a worn old soul reminiscing about a dear, departed friend.

“It’s a crying shame,” he says, with sincerity. “Old man did the best he could to raise that kid right, but he’d never give up those goddamned scrolls. Even if both their lives depended on it.”

Mel’s heart seizes, like someone’s just put their fist right through it. Word for word, that’s exactly what she’s been seeing in Janice every day since they first met. The blind obsession, the desperate determination, downright delirium, the way she’d put her own life in danger without hesitation if she thought the reward was worth the risk. She counts their money like it’s the most precious thing in the world, and she can’t seem to get through even an hour or two without reminding herself why she’s out here; Mel’s lost count of how many times she’s heard the words _‘scrolls’_ and _‘work’_ and _‘livelihood’_ in the few weeks since she signed on with her. She’d never give them up either, not for anything — or anyone — in the whole darn world.

Mel’s seen Harry Covington’s legacy scratched all over his daughter’s face. She knows that he left a chip on her shoulder the size of a mountain, but she’s never heard him described by anyone else, least of all by someone who knew them both.

It’s sobering, and deeply sad, and it makes Mel think again of those nights that Janice denies, the way she cries out in her sleep, the muttered pleas and whimpers, the things she says that don’t make any sense. For just a moment, just a broken, breathless heartbeat, Mel lets herself wonder if maybe those dreams are their own kind of echo, a last lingering gift from her childhood.

“You think it ever gets to her?” she wonders, only realising she’s asked the question out loud when Tybalt gives a thoughtful grunt.

“Hell if I’d know,” he says. Mel, feeling generous, blames the liquor for the blasphemy. “Before tonight, I hadn’t seen her in years. I can only tell you what she was like then. Now… aw, hell, you’ve seen her.”

“I surely have.” Mel sighs, then bites the bullet and explains. “She has dreams. Bad ones, I reckon. Spends all night begging and pleading and Lord only knows what else, then denies it come morning, strutting around like nothing happened, like I’m the crazy one for bringing it up.” She doesn’t mean to sound resentful, doesn’t even realise until the words are already out that maybe that’s how she feels. “Any idea what she might have hanging over her that’d make her lock up like that?”

“You’ve seen her,” Tybalt says again. His voice is light, but there’s real weight behind it. “Kid locks up everything. Trying to break down what might be going on in that thick head of hers in any given moment…”

“It’s like bashing yours against the wall,” Mel concedes with a frustrated sigh.

He shrugs, not seeming to care much either way. “I’d help you if I could. But Jan… she’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a whole lot of family pain.”

“Goodness, don’t I know it.” Still, it’s hard not to let the disappointment show. “Thanks anyhow. Guess I’ll just have to figure it out on my own.”

“Or you could just ask her,” Tybalt suggests. Mel opens her mouth to point out that she’s tried that at least a thousand times, but he laughs and shakes his head before she gets a word out. “ _Now_ , I mean. While she’s… you know…”

He trails off, mimics drinking to make the point real clear, and Mel gasps her outrage.

“Well, now,” she stammers. “I’m sure you can’t possibly be suggesting that I take advantage of that poor woman when she’s in such a delicate condition.”

Tybalt laughs, but it’s a shadow of his usual unfettered mirth. “Delicate?” he echoes. “ _Her_?”

“Well, you know what I mean. Delicate or not, don’t you think it’d be… improper?”

“Jesus Christ, it’s just a conversation.” He’s staring at her now, like he’s trying to figure out what backwards corner of the world she’s crawled out from. “Ain’t like you’re some shady barfly making the moves on her, is it?”

Mel blushes at the implication, and she has no idea why. “Well… no, I reckon not.”

She doesn’t point out that she’d almost be less worried if that were the case. Unwanted advances, Janice could handle with her fists or her whip; Mel would have to be crazy to worry about that. Conversation, though? That scares the living daylights out of her.

Reading her discomfort, Tybalt claps a hand on her shoulder. It’s real heavy, big like the rest of him, but he’s gentle with her in a way he never is with Janice; it’s like he can see all the little and not-so-little differences between them, the way Janice wants so badly to be seen as tough, and the way Mel doesn’t care about that at all. Janice takes that kind of playful violence as a mark of respect, bruised bones or no, but Mel wants nothing to do with it. She’s a lady, after all. And Janice…

Well. Janice might be a woman, but she’s surely no lady.

“Look,” Tybalt’s saying, oblivious. “Whatever situation you two have going on, it ain’t none of my business. But if you know her half as well as she says you do, you’ll know that she won’t give up a damn thing when she’s sober. It’s like she’s put up some big ol’ wall around herself, and… hell, I don’t know any better than you whether that’s Harry’s doing or whether she did out of self-preservation or whatever else. What I do know is that she’s not gonna be knocking it down any time soon. Not for the likes of me, or the likes of you. Old habits die hard, little miss.”

Mel thinks of Janice’s dreams, of the dark circles under her eyes come morning. “Well, now, I know that.”

“So there it is. You really want to know what makes her tick? Ask her now, when she’s too damn soused to care.” He shrugs, and his smile turns a little sharper. “Or you could… I dunno, respect her privacy and just leave the damn thing be?”

Mel sighs. Lord, how she wishes that was an option.

*

Janice comes around real slow.

She starts out moaning, and that’s how Mel knows she’s waking. For all the noise she makes when she’s dreaming, she never makes that one. She’s too busy growling or whimpering, and she never makes sounds that don’t match up to some awful emotion or another, something that touches on the thing she’s seeing or struggling against. Mel’s heard all sorts of noises come out of her mouth when she’s asleep, but the only time she ever moans like that is when she’s trying a little too hard to wake.

She does that now. Gradual and grudging, almost painful, and Mel’s by her side in less than a heartbeat.

“Janice?” She keeps her voice low, a whisper for Janice’s ears only, though that’s assuming she’s in any condition to hear it. “You still with me? Still alive in there?”

Janice blinks once, twice, three times. She’s clearly having trouble keeping her eyes open, much less getting them to focus on anything, but when she finally finds Mel’s it’s like a switch has been flipped on somewhere inside her brain. She jolts upright, swaying like a feather in a storm, then lets out a choking gasp.

“Oh, _God_ …”

Mel, quite naturally, assumes the worst. “What is it?” she squeaks, a thousand terrible outcomes all rushing through her head at once.

“You…” Janice shakes her head, swallows hard, then blinks another dozen times. “You’re _beautiful_.”

This time Mel’s the one who’s groaning, trying real hard not to think about the way that word makes her belly get warm. “Janice,” she says, enunciating as carefully as she can. “You’re drunk.”

Janice’s eyelids flutter, like she’s fighting very hard to stay conscious. “Doesn’t stop it from being true,” she mumbles.

Well. Mel doesn’t know what to make of that, and frankly she’s not rightly sure she wants to. She knows better than to take seriously anything Janice says when she’s like this, but it’s a heck of a challenge not to want to believe it, not to look past the heavy-lidded eyes and seek out the heat underneath. That way lies real danger, though, and a kind of stupidity she’s definitely not ready for. Still, it’s surprisingly tough not to buy in to that kind of nonsense when it’s been so darn long since she last heard it.

She shakes off the words, and the feelings they stir up inside her, reminds herself quite pointedly that she’s been breathing in Janice’s liquor fumes all night. She’s tired too, and easily influenced, and who wouldn’t be just a little bit flattered by the sight of big mean Janice Covington gazing up at her like she hangs the moon and the stars?

“Come on,” she says, as much for her own benefit as for Janice’s. “How about we get you some place with a proper bed?”

Janice whines, moaning all over again when Mel hauls her up onto her feet. “ _Your_ bed,” she protests, as petulant as a child. “Got it for _you_. Not _me_.”

“Well, you should’ve thought about that before you got yourself sloshed, shouldn’t you?” Well, what else can she say? If Janice is going to act like a child, Mel will darn well treat her like one. “We’re sure as heck not staying in here all night. So you get yourself moving, young la—”

“Don’t.” It sounds like a whimper, if only for a second. “Don’t call me that. Don’t you…” She turns her head ever so slightly, just enough that her face is pressed against Mel’s neck. Mel can feel her breath, hot and shallow. “Don’t say it, Mel, please.”

That just about rends Mel’s heart in two. She holds her close for a moment or two, keeps her steady with one hand on the back of her head and the other at her back, rocks her just a little until her body stops quivering. She wants to say something, to take Tybalt’s advice and ask the questions she’s been itching to, put her curiosity to bed once and for all. Janice is so exposed right now, so open and raw; it won’t take much to get the truth out of her.

 _Is this what you dream of?_ Mel wants to ask. _Is this what makes you cry and beg in the middle of the night? Is this what you won’t talk about?_

She doesn’t, though. She wants so badly to know, but she’s never seen Janice quite like this in all the time they’ve been travelling and working together. She’s never heard her sound so small, and for all that Tybalt might insist that it’s just a conversation it sure as heck doesn’t feel like one when Janice has her face pressed to her skin, when Mel can feel those little whimpers catching and hitching in her throat. She can’t do it; she won’t. There are things out there more valuable than getting answers. Respect, compassion, _trust_.

“All right,” she says, slamming the door on the part of her that’s curious. “I won’t push you no more. I promise.”

Janice makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle and lifts her head. Her eyes are hazy, heavy-lidded, but her jaw is as white as it always is when she’s angry at the world, when Mel has said or done something she doesn’t appreciate, when a dig turns up empty, when she—

“…hate everything,” she whines. “I just… hate _everything_.”

Mel has to bite down to keep from laughing. That has to be the most accurate description of Janice Covington she’s ever heard in her life.

“Well, now,” she says, bringing one of Janice’s arms up to sling across her shoulders. It doesn’t really steady her, but it’s better than nothing. “Knowing you as well as I do, I reckon ‘everything’ probably hates you too.”

Janice, being in no condition to recognise the poorly-veiled insult hidden there, giggles like a loon.

Mel shakes her head, allows a chuckle of her own, smitten in spite of herself at the sight of her like this, easy and unguarded, all her emotions right there on the surface; she’s so used to seeing them locked up tight, hidden away on pain of death, and she can’t keep her heart from crying out. _This part of you is so beautiful,_ she thinks. _I wish I knew why you feel like you always gotta hide it._

She ventures a few wobbly, experimental steps towards the door. Janice isn’t very good at putting one foot in front of the other right now, but she seems willing to follow Mel’s lead and do as she’s told. First time for everything, Mel supposes, appreciative.

They get outside, and the cool night air is like a slap to the face. Mel jolts a little, struck by the sudden drop in temperature after the overheated bar, and Janice shivers against her, stumbling badly and almost losing what little balance she has. She seems chilled too, affected in a way that she never is by extreme temperatures.

It’s a strange thing. They get all kinds of weather out on those digs of hers, blazing hot in the day and freezing cold in the night, and Mel has never seen Janice so much as blink at either one of them. When Mel bundles herself up at night in a dozen heavy blankets, Janice doesn’t even wear her socks to bed. When Mel’s dripping sweat under the midday sun, Janice is swaggering about in her hat and jacket, just as cool as you please.

Here and now, though, she’s acting like they’re in the Arctic, like the cold’s getting right into her bones, her blood, all the parts of her she needs to stay in one piece. She’s shaking real hard, and Mel has to stop their progress, ease them both down to the chilly ground and give her a moment to recover.

“Come on, now,” she chides. “Don’t be a baby. It’s just a little chilly. Not like it’s the end of the world or nothing.”

Janice groans, breathing hard against her neck. “Shut up,” she says, but there’s something in her voice that says this isn’t about the temperature, that she’s been struck by something else, something deeper. “ _Jesus_. Just… just…”

“All right.” Mel sighs, willing back her impatience. It’s cold, it’s dark, and she should have been in bed at least three hours ago. She cups Janice’s chin, tilts her head up until she meets her gaze. “What is it now?”

Janice’s eyes are wide, pupils huge, irises almost colourless. “Mel?” she whines, voice thick with strain and awe, like she’s seeing her for the very first time.

“Why, who else would it be?” She holds Janice’s face in her hands, steadies her. “Goodness, Janice. When you’ve sobered up some, we’re gonna have a nice long talk about responsible drinking.”

“Yeah, okay.” She sounds real distant, though, like she didn’t hear a word of it, and when she speaks again it’s with great urgency. “Mel, you… you’re gonna stick around, right?”

“Of course I am,” Mel says gently. “You know that already. Didn’t we discuss it just this morning?”

This is about the last place she wants to be having this conversation, but hey, at least they’re having it. At least Janice is voicing her feelings straight for once. Maybe Tybalt had a point about talking to her when she’s too drunk to put up those walls of hers; Mel won’t take advantage of her like this, not even for a second, but _Lord_ if it’s not gut-rending to look into her eyes and see that she’s not even trying to hide the pain.

Janice shakes her head, then groans. “Promise me,” she whispers, and the words are so slurred they barely make it out of her at all. “Promise me you won’t…”

“Janice,” Mel says, not caring one bit what’s coming next. “I…”

Janice whimpers. She wants to get it out, wants to make the words real and tangible and hers. She wants to make sure Mel knows what she’s agreeing to.

“Promise,” she says again, but this time she chokes on it. “Promise me you won’t die.”

“Oh.” The word wracks her, a shudder like an earthquake rending through her deepest places. “Oh, goodness. Janice…”

“Mel, _please_.” It’s like an explosion, loud enough to cut through the air, loud enough that Mel feels its tremors in her ribs. “I can’t lose you too. Not again. I can’t, I _can’t_ , I…”

Mel wants to weep. She knows, she really does, that this isn’t really real, that it’s just the effect of too much liquor, of spending the evening with an old family friend, of looking into his face and remembering the father she’s lost. Mel knows that it’s not really about _her_ , that it might as well be Tybalt holding her now for all the difference it would make. She knows all of that, of course she does… but still her heart breaks to be here, to feel the familiar salt staining her skin again, to watch the moisture catch on Janice’s eyelashes, her cheeks, her lips.

It doesn’t matter, she thinks. It doesn’t matter that she’s probably not even seeing Mel at all. All that matters is wiping away that grief, the moisture and the salt and that horrible, unjust hurt.

“I promise,” she chokes. “I promise you, Janice, I’m not gonna die. I promise.”

Janice slumps forward, cheeks soaking wet against Mel’s neck, mouth open and just as wet, shoulders shaking and shaking and shaking.

“You’re all that matters to me,” she sobs, but her voice isn’t hers at all.

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

She gets her back to the room at last, with only minimal struggling.

Janice cries for a little while, then goes limp for a whole lot longer, and Mel has to wait an embarrassing amount of time for her to come around and get herself standing again. She doesn’t have the strength, or the shoes, to drag her back all on her lonesome, so she sits there twiddling her thumbs and feeling like a fool while Janice drifts in and out of consciousness.

Blessedly, it seems that Janice’s stubbornness extends to this too, and she’s back on her feet long before Mel’s extremities go numb, swerving and sulking and pretending like nothing ever happened.

If she remembers her little outburst, she doesn’t let it show, and Mel doesn’t mention it either. She holds it close, locks it up inside herself, a secret all her own, and doesn’t stop to wonder why it feels so precious.

Back in the cramped little room, Mel sits Janice down on the bed, amused and a little bit awed by the way she doesn’t resist. She just sits where she’s put, staring at some distant point just behind Mel’s shoulder, and she doesn’t fuss or complain at all when Mel tries to strip her down a little. She pulls off her boots, jacket and hat, all the things that would make a problem of lying down, then fetches a glass of water from the bathroom. It’s tepid at best, and probably doesn’t taste good at all, but Janice has never been picky about that sort of thing before. Besides, Mel doesn’t care what the stuff tastes like; she’s just hoping it’ll sober her up a bit.

It doesn’t. Janice gets maybe two mouthfuls down, then shoves the glass away with frankly unnecessary violence.

“Knock it off,” she grumbles. It’s the first thing she said since Mel got her inside and sat her down. “Unless you want me to puke all over those fancy shoes of yours, get that stuff away from me.”

“Well, I’d sooner you didn’t,” Mel says, as gracious as she can be under the circumstances. “But if it’ll help you feel a little better…”

“It won’t,” Janice snaps, and topples back onto the bed with a groan. “Why can’t you just leave me alone and let me die in peace?”

The word makes Mel’s heart quake. It shouldn’t surprise her that Janice doesn’t feel the weight of what she’s saying — no doubt she hardly even remembers her choked-out confession back on the streets — but still the way she throws it about, so careless and calloused, makes Mel want to pull her in close and hug her until she does remember, until she sees just how much of herself she let show. She doesn’t, because she suspects it’ll take a whole lot more than a little hug to break through to Janice Covington, even in this state, but _Lord_ , how she wants to.

“Now, Janice,” she chastens instead, and takes some small measure of comfort in her own sobriety. “You’re not going to die. No-one is. Don’t you remember? I—”

“ _Ugh_.”

Janice groans again, louder this time, as much to cut her off as to express her own misery. She’s clearly preoccupied, oblivious to everything else around her, and Mel wants to shake her for it.

“Well,” she says, “maybe next time you’ll think twice before you do something like this and make a darn fool of yourself.” It’s hard not to be tender when she’s this pathetic, but Mel does her best. “What in Heaven’s name were you thinking, taking on a fella that size? It’s a miracle you don’t need running to the nearest hospital.”

Janice sits up, glares, then promptly falls over again.

“Why are you _talking_?” she whines. “Why are you always _talking_?”

Mel sighs. “All right,” she says, because _Lord_ , she’d do just about anything right now if it would rend that look from her face. “If I promise to quit talking, do you promise to try and get some more water down you?”

“No.” It comes out like a hiccup. “I just want to _die_.”

“Janice…” Mel’s heart tears. “Please stop saying things like that.”

“Ugh. _Fine_.” Again she tries to sit up, and again she fails abysmally. “I gotta get some sleep.” She squints up at Mel, trying comically hard to glare. “Am I allowed to do that, _Mother_?”

There’s real spite in that. It’s the first time Mel’s heard that word out of Janice’s mouth since that day in the tomb, since she was Xena and Janice confessed that her mama up and left. She wants to hug her, wants to say that she’d never do anything like that, that a mother is the last thing in the world she’d want Janice to think of when she looks at her. The ferocity of the feeling frightens her, though, and the words die before she can say them.

“Sure,” she says, surprising herself with how defeated she sounds. “You want me to leave you be?”

Janice lifts her head maybe half an inch. “Yeah,” she says, giving up and dropping back down. Then, less than half a second later, she hauls it back up and says, “No.”

Mel blinks. “Well, uh… which one?”

“You…” It’s painfully sweet, the way she’s blinking all rapid and bleary, like she’s desperately trying to keep Mel’s face in focus. “Jesus Christ, Mel. Don’t make it _complicated_.”

“Why, I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what you—”

She doesn’t get the chance to finish. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Janice grabs her by the collar and yanks her down onto the bed. “Shut up and hold me.”

Mel opens her mouth, then immediately closes it again. There’s no escaping the fact that this kind of manhandling is downright rude, but darn it all, it’s _Janice_. In all the time Mel’s known her, she’s never once asked for anything like this; heck, she’s never asked for anything at all. The very idea that she might want to be held, that she might want someone like Mel to be the one holding her… well, it’s just preposterous. The only time Janice ever lets Mel within a mile of her personal space is when she’s unconscious, dreaming about things she’ll deny come morning, in those rare unguarded moments when she’s not even aware she’s doing it.

She’s definitely aware now. Whether or not she’ll deny it come morning is a whole other question, of course, but she’s here and she’s at least mostly herself, and she knows perfectly well that it’s _Mel_ she’s hauling down next to her. Denial or no, she knows what she’s doing, so what’s a gal like Mel supposed to do?

It’s easier, just going along with her, so that’s what she does, settling down on the bed like this was her plan all along. It’s narrow, definitely not built for two, but Janice fits real nicely in her arms, all pressed up against her like she was built to be there. It’s like last night when she lost all her strength at the sound of her voice, like the night before when she fell into her arms and stayed there till morning. It’s like all the times she’s done this without knowing it, all the times she’s let Mel be there just like this, only this time Mel isn’t the only one who knows about it.

They’re both here this time, and not just in body. It’s not just Mel comforting a sleeping Janice, mumbling helpless endearments into the void; it’s Janice telling her to shut up and hold her, and it’s Janice curling up in her arms, Janice pressing her face to her chest, and who cares that she’s out of her head on liquor, who cares that she’s drunk when having her like this feels so much like all the things Mel never knew she was aching for?

It’s so strange. They’re both still wearing most of their clothes, Janice too far gone to strip off more than what Mel did for her and Mel too eager to do as she’s told while the opportunity’s there. Truth be told, there’s probably more between them now than there usually is when they’re sleeping in the truck, yet still somehow it feels like the most intimate moment in Mel’s life, like they’re sharing something so far beyond what it really is. A drunk colleague, maybe employer or maybe partner, maybe sort-of friend, and here she is holding her like they’re something so much deeper than all of those things.

It’s the same feeling Mel gets sometimes when they’re packing up after a dig and readying for the next, when Janice is warming up the truck, eyes bright with that lust for adventure, and she doesn’t even realise Mel is watching her. It’s rich and raw, the feeling she gets then, and sometimes she’s so overwhelmed that she almost feels like they’re back in that darn tomb; her heart remembers with crystal clarity how it felt to have Xena waking up inside her, how it felt to have the warrior princess breathing with her lungs.

Xena felt so much when she looked at Janice and thought of Gabrielle. Sometimes Mel feels it too. In those quiet moments when Janice isn’t yelling at her, when she’s staring off into the distance and thinking of some silly scroll-related stories, or else when she’s up to her elbows in sand and sweat, digging and digging and digging like both their lives depend on it, when she’s asleep and dreaming and spilling out her deepest secrets to the midnight air, unaware that Mel’s there too… yeah, Mel feels it. Deep and pure and truer than any scroll, any story, anything in the whole darn world. It’s a kind of history all its won, that feeling, and it’s as timeless as Xena.

She feels it now, lit up with it as though for the very first time. Janice is still flushed with drink, her whole body radiating heat in all the places where they’re touching, and Mel could just about drown in it.

“Stay close,” Janice mumbles, lips brushing her collarbones.

Mel knows she’s too far gone to fully understand what she’s saying, what they’re doing, where her mouth is, but still the three combined make her heart just sing.

“I will,” she says, and feels the promise burn in her blood.

*

She wakes in the dark, only halfway aware that she’d even drifted off, to Janice moaning and groaning like the living dead.

Well, that’s to be expected, she supposes, shaking herself alert. She doesn’t need to be an expert in the life of a lush to know that no-one can knock back as much as Janice did, fight and fail to stay conscious, without paying for it in the end. She wants to point out that the suffering is her just reward for acting like a fool, but it’s kind of hard setting her heart to stone when those noises make the poor thing sound like she’s being tortured. It’s also hard, not that she’d ever admit it, to keep from feeling a touch of adoration at seeing Janice Covington so reduced and knowing that she’s the only one who will.

“Please…” Janice whines, the words gritted out with agonising effort and mostly muffled by the pillow. “ _Kill me_.”

Mel swallows a schadenfreude-shaped smile. “Now, Janice. Don’t you think you’re being a touch melodramatic?”

She sits up a little, though, scrabbling in the darkness to find the curve of Janice’s back. It’s tight as a drum, the muscles locked up in a kind of spasm, and they twitch in little tremors under her hand. Janice is sprawled on her stomach, one fist balled in the sheet and the other floundering for purchase, for something solid to fight against whatever vertigo she’s being wracked with. Mel doesn’t need to make out her face to guess what colour it is, but she fumbles for a lamp just the same, more out of compassion than any real need to see what’s going on.

It takes a great deal of effort to get Janice sitting up. She’s not really heavy, but she can make herself into a dead weight when she wants to, and in any case Mel isn’t used to being the big lifter in their relationship. Out on their digs, she usually gets relegated to taking notes while Janice smugly hauls rocks and dirt with her bare hands and doesn’t even break a sweat. Still, she gets her up by pure force of will, and finds her blinking queasily through heavily lidded eyes.

“ _Ohh_ …” Janice moans. Her voice is really thick, her face unpleasantly pale, and Mel has a sinking feeling she knows where this is going. “Just… put me out of my misery…”

“Well, now,” Mel chides with a gentle smile. Not that Janice is in any fit state to see it, of course. “Can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy it, ordinarily speaking. But you done brought this on yourself, Janice Covington, and it’s only right that you suffer through it the old-fashioned way.”

Janice tries to glare, but it’s as weak and pitiful as the rest of her. “You never loved me,” she whines, and Mel has to fight to keep from wondering where _that_ came from. “If you did, you wouldn’t take joy in my suffering.”

“Now, now. I wouldn’t say I’m ‘taking joy in it’, exactly…”

“Uh huh.” She hunches forward a bit, head in her hands, and groans loud enough to wake the dead. “I’m never getting on another boat as long as I live.”

Mel forces down a laugh. “We’re not on a boat, Janice.”

Janice lifts her head. “It’ll be fine,” she says, like she didn’t hear her at all. “I’ll just… stay in Ithaca for the rest of my life. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Ithaca?” Mel echoes, confused. “When in the world—”

But the answer comes to her before she can even finish the question. Janice has never been to Ithaca, not the modern nor the mythical. Mel knows this perfectly well because they talked about it one time. It was late at night, though not quite so late as this, and they were poring over one of those darn scrolls. She remembers it clearly now because Janice was drinking then too, sipping whiskey or scotch or something, and Mel kept warning her to keep the stuff away from the parchment.

Janice glared at her then, like she’d suggested they cut off her head. She said that she knew what she was doing, thank you very much, and that she’d never risk damaging the scrolls. Mel remembers the heat on her face, maybe the first time she saw her flushed like this, and the way it bled into her words when she said, _“Just shut up and read the damn thing.”_

Mel, far meeker then and eager to impress, did.

 _“I sing of Ithaca, of sirens and seasickness and an ill-fated romance…”_

Reading it, she had to struggle real hard not to laugh herself silly. Xena matching wits with the famed Ulysses, and a queasy Gabrielle gone as green from jealousy as from the sea. Janice was none too pleased about that part, of course, and Mel had to school the humour to spare her blushes. Even now, knowing the centuries and differences between them, Janice still takes Gabrielle’s weaknesses as personal slights against herself, like she’s somehow responsible for every little flaw in a woman centuries dead.

Mel can’t help thinking that’s kind of absurd, but she knows Janice too well to try and convince her. And, well, who the heck is Xena’s descendant to say anything about whatever inferiority complex Gabrielle’s might have? Janice, always so resentful that her blood is tied to the ‘useless tag-along’, would be right for once to tell her _‘you don’t understand’_.

Looking down at her now, she does. A little, at least. For maybe the first time since they set out together, she sees their tangled pasts light up together, sees Gabrielle’s shame burning in Janice’s headache-squinting eyes. It burns in Mel too, recognition like a kind of clarity, a thunderbolt that steals the breath clean out of her body.

She remembers Ares’s tomb, remembers feeling disoriented and confused but only for a moment, remembers looking out and finding the word distorted, as though she was looking at it from behind an invisible barrier. She remembers _Xena_ , remembers how their souls and their memories fused, how they became a part of each other, a moment millennia in the making. She remembers feeling like she was a part of something impossible, something celestial, remembers realising that the disbelief was not hers alone, that _Xena_ was just as awed to be a part of _her_.

She remembers how heady it all was, being so connected to someone so powerful, how it felt to have that power ignite inside her, to live and breathe and _be_ the warrior princess, to hold the chakram and feel it respond in rhythm with her breath and body, to stand toe-to-toe with the god of war and know beyond all doubt that she would defeat him, to look back and see Janice staring at her, wide-eyed and breathless and awestruck, like all of a sudden she, _Mel_ , was the whole wide world, like nothing else mattered, like…

…like Gabrielle used to stare at Xena.

Mel remembers that too. She shouldn’t, she knows, because the memories aren’t hers any more, but still somehow she does. They’re Xena’s experiences, her feelings, but they’re inside Mel now too, a thousand visions of Gabrielle whirling in her head, as sure and real as the visions of Xena she sees trembling in Janice’s delirious, drunken eyes.

 _Oh,_ she thinks, and all of a sudden a lot of things make a lot of sense.

She remembers how Janice recoiled to discover where she came from, the way she spat the name like a sour taste. _“I’m related to the useless tag-along,”_ she said, and Xena’s heart filled Mel’s with more love than she’d ever felt in her whole life. She remembers how true it was, how completely she felt it in every fibre of her being when Xena shook her head and said, _“She was the finest friend anyone could ever have.”_

She feels it again now. That friendship, that more-than-friendship that Xena shared with Gabrielle, and it burns in her chest like all those strange feelings she doesn’t understand, the warmth in her belly when Janice says her name like it matters, the flutter in her chest when she looks at her and doesn’t scowl, the sting in her eyes when she says _“you’re all that matters to me”_.

She looks down at Janice, green-faced and groaning, and finally understands why she swears she doesn’t dream.

 _They’re not yours,_ she realises, blinking back tears. _They’re hers._

She finds Janice’s face with her hand, feathers her fingertips across her cheek like she did when Janice was talking in her sleep, when she was begging and pleading, when nothing but the sound of Mel’s voice would calm her down.

 _Oh, Janice,_ she thinks, but she doesn’t say the name out loud. Instead, breathless and just a little wary, she says, “Gabrielle?”

Janice smiles.

“Xena…” she breathes, and a place in Mel’s heart says, _‘I’m here’_.

*

Sadly, though not surprisingly, the sweetness doesn’t last.

They spend the next half-hour in the bathroom, Janice hunching over the washbasin while Mel stands at arms’ length and awkwardly pats her on the back. It’s not really pleasant for either of them, but it does help her to sober up some, and brings her back to herself.

The transition happens fast, sudden and unexpected; one moment she’s mumbling deliriously about sirens and storms and wanting to be thrown overboard, and the next she’s cursing Mel’s name for letting her drink so much in the first place.

Mel lets her rant, and doesn’t say anything. Her head’s too full to take the insults personally anyway, and she can’t stop replaying the last few nights in her head, transformed by this new information. She wants to ask if Janice knows about it, if she’s been keeping it secret by choice, something special that’s only hers like the way Xena’s blood is only Mel’s, or if she genuinely doesn’t realise it’s happening. She’s bursting to talk about it, to turn this new discovery into words and poetry, to translate it like one of the Xena scrolls. The curiosity drives her almost to distraction, makes her hands flutter over Janice’s back, makes her itchy and restless.

“Knock it off, would you?” Janice whines, then groans, then heaves. She’s definitely herself now, no two ways about it. “Jesus Christ, you’re making it worse.”

Mel doesn’t point out that Janice was doing a pretty stellar job of making it worse all on her own, but she bites her tongue in the name of compassion.

“Well, goodness,” she says instead, with only surface sincerity, “I’m sure I’m very sorry.”

“The hell you are.” She grips the side of the basin for a moment, then straightens up by pure force of will, seemingly just so she can scowl at her. “I’m… I’m gonna kill that oversized bastard…”

“You didn’t exactly need much convincing,” Mel points out, not unkindly. “Seems to me you were just itching for an excuse to blow off some steam.”

“Shut _up_.” She looks a mess, shaking and sweaty, eyes all bloodshot, but she’s still got a glare that puts the fear of God into Mel. “Idiot knew how to push my buttons. Playing my old man like a goddamn poker chip…”

Mel wets a washcloth and leans in to wipe Janice’s face, ineffectual but hopefully a little soothing at least. “Come on, now,” she chides. “It’s not like he said anything cruel or mean or…”

“How the hell would you know?” She’s getting defensive now, the rising anger bringing colour back to her face in a blotchy flood. Mel sorely hopes this won’t end with her punching the nearest wall. “You never knew him, and you don’t…” She whirls back to the basin, bends double for a long, wretched moment, and doesn’t straighten back up. “And you don’t know me.”

Mel flinches at that. Janice doesn’t often make her flinch, even when she’s at her most unfair and unforgiving; they’ve been travelling and working together for long enough by now that she knows she’s (mostly) all bark and very little bite, but _Lord_ if this one doesn’t land square in the chest. She’d swear she actually feels it squeezing that vulnerable place between her lungs, and for a moment or two it’s all she can do not to turn around and start crying.

“Now, you don’t mean that,” she manages at last, weak and wounded. “Weren’t but a few short hours ago you were saying I do know you.”

“Bullshit.” She turns around, slow and careful, looking utterly exhausted. “If you really knew me, you would’ve hit the road long before now.”

“Don’t you dare talk like that,” Mel chastens, feeling heat rise on her own face. “I already told you I’m in this for the long run, didn’t I?”

Janice opens her mouth to argue, then shuts it again and shuts her eyes with it. It’s a long moment before she remembers to open them again, and when she does it’s with a pained sort of squint, like she’s fighting off the world’s worst headache. Given how much she’s had to drink, she may well be. Mel lifts the washcloth again, presses it gently to her forehead.

“Christ, I don’t remember,” Janice mutters at last. She’s moody, but she doesn’t resist the contact. “Did you?”

Mel catches her breath for a moment. Without thinking, she lets the cloth fall to the ground, lets her hand linger in its place, knuckles cool against Janice’s brow, her temple, her cheek. Janice is conscious now, not really sober but as close to it as any reasonable person could hope for, and Mel knows that it’s dangerous, the way she finds the lines on her face, the way she holds there, not for any reason other than because she wants to, because she wants it to feel good. It’s dangerous and strange and it shouldn’t make her pulse quicken like it does, but _Lord_ if she can’t stop thinking about Xena and Gabrielle, about the way Xena’s heart fluttered in harmony with her own when she saw Gabrielle in Janice.

“Yeah,” she breathes. Everything feels so raw, so ocean-deep, like maybe they were on a boat after all, drowning together in some endless, nameless sea. “I did.”

Janice turns her head a little, lets the backs of Mel’s fingers shift down from cheek to jaw, catching the corner of her mouth. It’s a strange kind of new intimacy, like she’s seeing parts of Janice that were previously locked away, like Janice is letting her into places she wasn’t allowed to go before. Mel doesn’t know why, doesn’t know where the moment came from, but Janice’s breath is fever-hot against her fingers and it’s all she can do just to keep breathing, to turn her palm a little and try to find the memory of salt and pain.

“Jesus…” Janice whispers, and for about half a second it’s so beautiful, so much an echo of what Mel imagines Xena had with Gabrielle. But it’s only a moment, can’t ever be more than that, because Janice isn’t Gabrielle right now; she’s _Janice_ , and she doesn’t know how to be subtle. “Ugh, get away from me. I probably reek of booze.”

Mel takes back her hand, struck by how reluctant she is to end the moment and the contact. Janice has a point — for all her beauty right now, she’s got the unmistakable and unpleasant air of someone who’s consumed and revisited her weight in things that violently disagree with her — but that doesn’t make it any easier to turn away, to look back to the bedroom and realise that if she sticks around in here she may well do something idealistic and foolish.

“You feeling good enough to go back to bed?” she asks softly.

Janice considers for a moment, gauging her body’s responses, then sighs and shakes her head. “Not a chance.”

“Oh.”

Janice doesn’t look at her. No doubt she doesn’t need to; the disappointment is thick in Mel’s voice. “You should, though,” she says, with what she must assume is kindness. “No sense in both of us being miserable out here. Not when it’s all my goddamn fault.”

Mel blinks. “Now, didn’t you just say it was his fault?” she asks, because she can’t very well let that one slide.

Janice turns back to the washbasin and leans right in until her forehead touches the surface. “Shut up,” she says. “And for Christ’s sake, go back to bed. I paid for the damn thing, someone sure as hell better get some use out of it.”

Mel’s fingers twitch. They miss Janice’s face, her skin; they miss the curve of her jaw and her cheek, the warmth and the way she’s so strong even in this. They miss being able to read her mood by the tension and the colour and the way she moves or doesn’t move. Mel doesn’t want to turn away from all of that; she doesn’t want to leave this moment to unravel.

 _I want to touch you,_ she thinks, and the ferocity of the feeling makes her reel. _I want to touch you like Xena touched Gabrielle. I don’t care that you brought it all on yourself, I want to make you feel better. I want to make you feel everything. Heaven preserve me, I want you._

It frightens her, thinking like that. These sorts of feelings might have been acceptable in Ancient Greece, but they’re not in Ancient Greece now, and it’s definitely not acceptable for her to be looking at Janice like this, to be thinking this way, feeling this way, _being_ this way. It’s not acceptable for a well-bred Southern gal to be having these thoughts, or feelings or whatever they are, about another woman. It doesn’t make it acceptable just because Janice talks and acts and dresses like a man. It’s still not right. It’s still…

She turns away before the thought can end itself, before her heart betrays her by saying it doesn’t care.

“You’re right,” she says, much too fast. “The good Lord knows, I need the sleep.”

“Well, there you go, then,” Janice grunts. Her voice is strained now, like she’s fighting back another wash of discomfort, like the only thing keeping her from bending over again is that she doesn’t want to do it in front of Mel. “Get going, will you? Give a girl some privacy.”

Mel closes her eyes for a moment, tries very hard to catch her breath. She can hear Janice shifting a little behind her, pictures a little too clearly the look on her face as she gives up the pretence of strength. A part of her wants to turn around and go to her, put her hands at her back or in her hair or whatever other place she might want them, offer some little comfort, but she doesn’t. Janice doesn’t want her to, and Mel doesn’t exactly trust herself not to get carried away.

She can’t stop seeing Gabrielle in her eyes, can’t stop hearing her voice in Janice’s throat. She can’t let go of Xena’s feelings, the bursting pain in her heart and the burn in her lungs, loss and distance and a kind of love she’d never imagined. It’s a frightening feeling, all those unvoiced and undefined things she’s caught herself thinking about Janice, and now this, Xena and Gabrielle, and… and…

She straightens her back, turns towards the bedroom, the bed itself all rumpled and empty and lonely.

“I hope you feel better soon,” she says.

Naturally, Janice’s only response is another miserable groan.

*

Thankfully, things get quieter come morning.

Mel sleeps in, long and late. She means to stay awake, listening in and holding out for an opportunity to go back to Janice’s side, but after one too many bad nights her body has other plans; all that exhaustion catches up with her in one fell swoop, and she’s out cold almost before her head even hits the overstuffed pillow. It’s a blissful sleep, empty and uninterrupted by either of their dreams, and she wakes groggy but rested to sunshine streaming in through the window.

She finds Janice in the bathroom, curled up next to the washbasin with her shirt balled up under her head. She’s sleeping the sleep of the dead, oblivious to everyone and everything and snoring like a darn earthquake. Mel knows better than to expect the moaning and groaning won’t return in full force as soon as she limps back to consciousness, but for the time being at least she seems to be sleeping it off in relative comfort. _Thank the Heavens for small mercies,_ Mel thinks, and leaves her to it.

She scribbles a quick note, just in case Janice wakes on her own, then heads outside in search of breakfast. She doesn’t know much about hangovers, but she knows enough to know that food is a must if either one of them want to live through it.

The bar’s already open — or else it never closed — and Mel’s not sure whether to be impressed or horrified by that. She _tsk_ s a little as she crosses the street, and she would have gladly sauntered past the place without a passing thought, only she catches the scent of food from inside and her rumbling stomach makes the decision on all its own.

Inside, thank the Heavens, the place is all but deserted. The bartender, the same one as last night, is wiping down the bar with a weary look on his face. He looks like Mel imagines Janice will feel when she wakes, only without the benefit of blaming the drink. It’s not much of a surprise, really; Mel’s pretty sure she’d be questioning her life choices too if they involved dealing with people like Janice Covington all day and every day.

(Well, okay, maybe they do. But at least she’s sober most of the time.)

He blinks a little at the sight of her, as though taking a moment to place her face, then the sour expression falls off his face and he chuckles. “How’s your friend feeling this morning?”

Mel shrugs as politely as she can. Tact has never been her strong point, but she doesn’t need to think too hard to know what Janice would do to her if she thought Mel was talking up her discomfort in public. 

“I reckon she’s learned her lesson,” she says carefully. “For now, anyhow.”

The barkeep snorts. No doubt he’s heard that one before, countless times. “Not too well, I hope,” he says. “Damn good for business, nights like that.”

The lines on his face tell a very different story, though, and Mel wonders if the clean-up was worth the profit from all those shots. A healthy wallet is one thing, but if the last few weeks with Janice have taught Mel anything, it’s that a good night’s sleep is worth a whole lot more.

“You got anything to eat?” she asks, in a futile bid at taking both their minds off such things.

He studies her for a beat or two, then sighs with a sort of world-weary defeat. “Sure.” He keeps his tone salesman-light, but there’s a sort of strain hidden underneath, like he doesn’t want her to see that it’s a bother. Good business, Mel supposes, and wonders when she got so insightful that she can pick up on these things. “The greasier the better, right?”

“For her,” Mel says, nodding eagerly. “As for me… well, now, I don’t suppose you got something a little lighter back there?”

He stares at her for a long moment, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, then shakes his head. “Afraid not.”

Mel sighs. Slowly but surely, she’s starting to rue the day she ever complained about jerky and graham crackers.

It gets real quiet once he slips out back to start cooking. Mel sits herself down at the bar to wait, twiddling her thumbs and generally feeling awkward. She’s not used to being a bother to other people, and she’s definitely not used to sitting around in seedy bars in the middle of the day waiting around for food she has no intention of eating. She’s a little too much of a wallflower to ever be comfortable in a place like this, even empty as it is right now, and short of stacking up all the coasters she has no idea what to do.

Not that she’d ever admit it out loud, but it’s almost a relief when a big, sort of familiar hand drops onto her shoulder.

“Well, lookie what the cat dragged in.” It’s almost maddening, how Tybalt sounds like he hasn’t drunk so much as a drop. He matched Janice drink for drink last night, Mel recalls, but his voice is as clear as a bell this morning, and when she turns to look at him his eyes are as bright as if he’d never touched a bottle in his life. “Can’t help but notice Jan’s not here with you.”

The pitch of his voice makes it pretty clear he knows why, and it makes Mel bristle in spite of herself.

“She’s still asleep,” she says. “With any luck, she’ll stay that way for a good while yet. Heaven knows, her morning mood’s bad enough on a good day.”

Tybalt snorts a quiet laugh. “Hasn’t changed a bit,” he murmurs, then sits himself down next to her without waiting for an invitation.

Mel quirks a brow, but doesn’t tell him to move. “You need something?”

“What? Can’t a fella enjoy your company without being accused of ulterior motives?” He tries to grin, but it’s weak, and when Mel quirks a _‘who do you think you’re fooling’_ eyebrow, he folds like a house of cards. “Look. Just wanted to say… on the off-chance that she even remembers, go ahead and let her think she won.”

It’s a strange thing to want, and Mel doesn’t even try to hide her frown. Frankly, she was kind of hoping she’d never have to hear about the silly competition again, though thinking on it now she supposes such a hope was naïve of her; she knows as well as anyone how stubborn and hard-headed Janice can be when she sets her mind to it, and it’d take a lot more than her body weight in cheap liquor to block out the memory of being bested. She’ll drag this foolishness to her grave if that’s what it takes to gain the illusion of respect, and they both know it.

Still, it’s a surprise that her opponent, quick as he was to goad her into it, would be the one to show this kind of chivalry. From what little Mel understands of these things, bragging rights are supposed to be the whole point.

“Well, now,” she murmurs, narrowing her eyes to try and find his angle. “That’s mighty considerate of you…”

“What can I say?” He grins. “I’m a considerate sort of a guy.”

Mel stares at him for a long, thoughtful moment. She might not have Janice’s talent for glaring, but she can muster a fierce look well enough, and it doesn’t take much to make him squirm.

“I mean to say,” she presses, sharpening her voice as well as her expression, “it’s mighty considerate given that you’re the dang fool who roped her into it in the first place.”

“Oh.” To his credit, the grin falls off his face real fast once the criticism hits. “Well, uh… Yeah. Touché, I guess.”

“Touché,” she echoes dryly. She lets the weight hang over the bar between them for a moment, then eases up just a touch. “Why’d you do it, huh? Playing on her insecurities like that…”

“Wasn’t my intention,” he says. It comes out a little too hasty, but there’s no doubting his sincerity. “You gotta believe that. I just… hell, I just wanted to get her to lighten up a bit, that’s all. Poor kid’s had the weight of the world on her shoulders ever since her old man passed and she took up that quest of his. Those goddamned scrolls or whatever. Drove him straight to the grave, those goddamn things, and I’ll be damned to Hell myself before I’ll stand by and let the same thing happen to her.”

It’s a deep, heartfelt confession, and the intensity surprises her. “You owe him that much?”

“No. _He_ owed _her_ that much. But since he’s not here to make good on it…” He shrugs, like it’s all just water under the bridge. It’s not, Mel knows; she only needed to know Janice for two minutes before she learned that one. “Look. I just thought I could get her to forget about all that crap for a while. Maybe remind her how it feels to cut loose. Have some fun. You know?”

“Believe me,” Mel says. “Last night wasn’t much fun for anyone.”

“Guess not.” He huffs out a breath, like a sigh but not so heavy. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t know she still takes that stuff so damn personal. I figured she’d be… well…” He glances at the door, like he halfway expects Janice to storm in and cut them both a new one for daring to gossip about her. If truth be told, Mel halfway expects the same thing. “Hell, I guess it doesn’t much matter what I figured, now, does it? Only thing that matters is that I got it wrong.”

“Yeah,” Mel says, thinking of Janice’s drunken whispers, the ones that came from Gabrielle and the ones that were all her own. “Yeah, you did.”

She sighs, and so does he. “All this time,” he says sadly, “and it’s still an open wound.”

Mel’s not sure that’s exactly right. Janice has a lot of issues, her daddy’s work being but one of them. She can’t help wondering if maybe Janice’s past isn’t the open wound, if maybe it’s just Janice.

Without thinking she blurts out, “We’re working on it. Making it better, I mean. Making it less…” She gestures, not really knowing what she’s trying to say. “Well. We’re trying, anyhow.”

He raises an eyebrow, studying her with sudden seriousness. He doesn’t seem surprised, exactly, just a little thoughtful. “Did you say ‘we’?”

“Sure did.” She straightens her shoulders, feeling oddly protective of this thing they have. “For better or for worse. She and me, we’re in this together. _Partners_.”

It’s a bold word, she knows, a kind of statement, and it surprises her how neatly it fits on her tongue. She’s not sure where it comes from, the sudden confidence, but there it is, burning inside of her like a fire. She’s never said anything like this out loud, not to anyone but Janice, and barely even to her, yet here she is spilling it all out in front of a near-perfect stranger. Maybe it’s just easier that way.

“Funny way of putting it,” Tybalt says. He’s speaking quietly now, but without judgement. If he has an opinion, he’s thoughtful enough not to voice it. “Gotta say, she’s lucky to have you.”

That’s a surprise. Mel’s never really thought of herself as much of a prize to anyone, least of all Janice. “Oh?”

“Well, sure.” He gestures, like it’s obvious. “Someone’s gotta protect her from lunkheads like me, don’t they?”

Mel shakes her head. “Janice don’t need protecting,” she says. “Not from you or no-one else.” She thinks on that a spell, then sighs. “Well, no-one but herself, anyhow.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, struck unexpectedly by a memory of that night in the truck, of Janice with the revolver in her hand, asleep and unaware of the fact that she was pointing it straight at Mel’s head. She remembers again those choked-out whimpers, the stumbling, mumbling pleas, desperate words that didn’t match the violence coiled in her body. She thinks about how much sense now it all makes now, the words coming not from Janice but from Gabrielle, not through her quill or her parchment but through her blood, her heart pouring itself out through Janice’s body and her voice.

How devastating, Mel thinks, that Janice only feels safe enough to beg when someone else is doing it for her.

When she comes back to herself, just a moment or two later, she finds that Tybalt’s staring at her again. He’s got a guarded look on his face now, something very sober and far away from his usual cool charm. Watching the way he watches her, sizing her up like she’s some teenage boy asking his daughter to the dance. It’s an uncomfortable metaphor, and it makes her blush. 

“Like I said,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her, “she’s lucky to have you.”

Mel’s still not sure she agrees. But the thought warms her just the same.

*

When she gets back to the room, Janice is awake.

She’s also in a foul mood. Mel’s barely even gotten both feet in the door before she’s lunging at her, swaying like a sailor in a storm and waving the note in her face.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demands. “You said _‘be back soon’_. We’re way past ‘soon’…”

She scowls, but she’s not fooling anyone; Mel can tell that she’s feeling a little better. What sleep she did get has clearly served her well. She wants to capitalise on that, to give her a hard time while she can, but that strange too-warm feeling stops her before she can get the words out. If nothing else, she supposes, the overblown histrionics show that Janice cares too. A little. Sort of. Maybe.

“Sorry,” Mel says, without much sincerity.

“Uh huh.” Janice squints at her through an obvious headache. “Tell me you brought food, at least.”

“Well, now, of course I did,” Mel says, shaking her head. “You think I’d risk letting you get all cranky and moody without a decent breakfast?”

Predictably, Janice just scowls. “I don’t get ‘cranky’,” she grumbles, rather proving Mel’s point. “And I sure as hell don’t get ‘moody’.”

“Of course you don’t. But it’s here just the same, so you might as well make use of it.” It’s not much to look at, a badly-wrapped brown package that smells faintly of grease, but Mel hands it over eagerly enough, if only to avoid an argument. “With any luck, it’ll clear up that hangover but good.”

Janice doesn’t need telling twice; she grabs the package like it’s the Holy Grail and rips at the paper with her bare hands. Being halfway out of her mind hasn’t dulled her primal instincts none, it seems, though Mel supposes that’s for the best; the food she’s wrangled from the bar isn’t really edible by anyone’s definition. She’s fairly sure she’s never seen anything like it, little triangle-cut sandwiches made out of deep-fried breakfast foods, bacon and sausage and other things that have no place in a self-respecting sandwich. But heck, if it’s good enough for Janice…

It is, at least for the most part. Janice eats very slowly, no doubt wary of her delicate stomach but there’s genuine enthusiasm in the way she goes at it, like she’d be in Heaven if she were feeling just a touch less green. Mel can’t quite keep from smiling, unable to hide the lingering warmth inside of her, the affection that swells at the sight of her slowly but surely regaining her usual strength.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Janice mumbles, about halfway through one of the sandwich things.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Mel says.

Janice scowls, then takes a deliberately oversized bite. “Why’d you always gotta ruin a nice moment?” she asks, without swallowing. “Huh? Why’d you always gotta do that?”

“Well,” Mel shoots back. “I dare say you’re doing a peachy job of ruining it all on your lonesome. You don’t need no help on that score, believe you me.”

Janice mutters something incoherent under her breath, and goes back to venting her frustration on the sandwich.

Mel watches her eat, but doesn’t say anything more. She wants to ask how she’s feeling, to find her face with her hands like she’s done so many times lately, to smooth away some of the lines left behind from last night, maybe some of the lines that were put there long before. She wants to dive back into the tenderness that swept over both of them while Janice was hugging the basin and Mel was wiping her face.

She wants to look into Janice’s eyes and ask if she remembers that shared moment, or the more important one that came before. She wants to ask her if she remembers being delirious, if she remembers being _Gabrielle_ , if there is any part of her at all that remembers the moment the world turned over on its axis and became something new and old at the same time. She wants to ask if she remembers what she felt when she looked up at her without seeing and said _“Xena,”_ with so much love in her voice.

 _You were her,_ she thinks, and she wants to ask if Janice feels it too, the hum of history in her blood, in their shared blood. She wants to… she wants to…

She wants to do a great many things a self-respecting lady shouldn’t.

Blinking away the thoughts, the _wants_ , she looks up to find Janice staring at her over the last bite of her sandwich. She look curious, maybe even a little worried, assuming she’s capable of such a thing. Given how wretched Mel knows she must be feeling, even just the idea that Janice might spare a thought for her at all is touching beyond words.

She takes care to swallow this time before speaking, and that’s a different kind of touching, no less profound. She coughs uncomfortably when she’s done, then blurts out, “You okay?”

Mel pretends not to hear the question. “Hm?”

Janice makes another sound, like she can’t get her throat clear. “Just wondering. You got kinda quiet and… I dunno. _Something_.”

Mel chuckles. It’s not exactly erudite, but it’s more than she’d expect from Janice. “Why, I’m flattered that you’d notice.”

She’s serious about that, but it doesn’t mean much to Janice. “Don’t play coy, Mel,” she says, looking pained. “I don’t got the stomach for it. Just say it straight: what’s eating you?”

“I…”

But how in the world is she supposed to ‘say it straight’ when it’s a feeling that defies words? She’s never been good at shaping her thoughts into sentences. Words were never her own gift; she’s only good with them when they belonged to someone else first, when they’re in some ancient, obscure language and she’s reading them aloud for posterity. Gabrielle’s scrolls turn into a fresh kind of poetry when she translates them, but her own emotions are stilted and strange on her tongue. Every piece of syntax she’s ever learned quits her when she turns it back on herself.

Besides, she’s never really had feelings before that wanted putting into words. She’s always been too practical for that sort of nonsense, too whip-smart, too focused, too darn _sensible_.

She doesn’t feel sensible now, and she sure as heck doesn’t feel practical. She feels like a silly little schoolgirl again, giddy and excitable and young, gasping as her heart quickens over nothing at all. She feels like there’s nothing else in the world, only the echo of Gabrielle’s words on Janice’s lips, the echo of Xena’s heartbeat behind her own ribs, their souls and their stories stretching out and out across time and space, separate but forever connected.

 _I want to touch you,_ she thinks, suddenly and inexplicably desperate. _I want to remember what Xena felt when she touched Gabrielle, and I want to make a whole new set of memories, things that are just us, just you and me and… and…_

She can’t explain it. She can’t say the words. They lodge in her throat, freezing and squeezing and choking the life clean out of her, and when she tries to meet Janice’s eye she finds that she can’t bring herself to do that either. She can’t lie, can’t tell her it’s nothing, but she can’t speak the truth either, can’t ‘say it straight’ because there’s nothing _straight_ in any of this, because there’s nothing to _say_ …

So she doesn’t. She doesn’t open her mouth; she closes it instead. And she takes a deep breath, and she closes her eyes as well, and she leans in, right in, all the way in. She leans in as far as she can get, and she finds Janice’s face not with her hands this time but with her lips, with her closed mouth and her stuttering breath, and _this,_ she thinks, _this is what’s eating me, this is what I want, you, you’re what I want, you and you and us and this and you and…_

Janice leans back. Her eyes are wide, skin still pale but kind of flushed now too, blotchy and confused; she looks like her body is splitting apart, like there’s a crack running right through her.

“Oh,” she breathes, barely audible.

Mel licks her lips, nods as slow as she can. She takes a deep breath, swallows her Southern pride and her Southern shame, closes her eyes and thinks of Xena.

“Yeah,” she says, and kisses her good and proper.

*


	6. Chapter 6

*

A minute, an hour, a lifetime later, Janice pulls away.

She’s gawking like a fish, eyes wide and mouth half-open. She looks for all the world like she’s just been punched in the jaw, and if this were any other situation Mel might laugh at her for being so easily thrown, might brag about being the one to reduce Janice Covington to this kind of wordless floundering. She’d be so darn proud of herself, truth be told, if this wasn’t so serious, if the stakes weren’t so high, if they were in the ancient world instead of 1940, if they were some place — any place — other than this cramped little room, Mel breathless and Janice with her lipstick on her mouth.

 _It’s all right for them,_ she thinks, surprising herself by how bitter the words feel in her head. _Xena and Gabrielle and whoever else. Weren’t no-one who cared a whit back then what you did or why or with whom. Well, we don’t get that kind of luxury nowadays, and it’s not so dang simple._

She opens her mouth to apologise, to take it all back if that’s what needs to be done, but she doesn’t get the chance. Janice holds up a hand to silence her, and the gawking, baffled look on her face loosens up until it’s more like contemplation. She’s touching her lips, eyes misting over, and whatever floundering sorries Mel might have summoned just plain die in her throat at the sight of her like that.

She is sorry, sure, because this is messy and complicated and dangerous, because it’s a silly whim with serious consequences, but at the same time, staring like a giddy schoolgirl as Janice touches her own mouth, she finds that she’s not really sorry at all. Days of feeling like this, of trying her darnedest not to feel it, and when it all comes down she finds that she doesn’t regret it. Sure, she wishes it weren’t quite so messy, so foolish or dangerous or whatever else, but _no_ , even without the echo of Xena’s memory in her head, she just can’t bring herself to unwant the taste of Janice’s mouth.

“Shit,” Janice manages after a long, excruciating moment. “Christ, Mel, I’m sorry.”

And just like that, Mel’s the one who’s gawking. “ _You’re_ sorry?” she echoes, flabbergasted. “Well, goodness, what in the world for?”

“Oh, you know,” Janice mumbles, wincing and turning yet another new colour. Mel is pretty sure she’s never seen her quite so flustered. “I probably taste like death. And bacon. And…” She grimaces. “Well. Ain’t exactly the best first impression, if you get my drift.”

Mel stares at her for a moment, not sure what to make of that, whether to believe that anyone could really be so shallow in such a deep moment. It’s not exactly logical, but… well, it’s Janice.

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?” she asks.

“Sure,” Janice says, frowning. “What else would I…” She trails off, thinking for about half a second, then claps a hand to her face as the realisation finally sinks in. “ _Oh_.”

She’s blanching all over again now, and Mel wants so desperately to make this less awkward, but what can she say, really, that isn’t blindingly obvious? “Janice…”

“Uh.” Janice coughs. Boy, has the penny ever dropped. “Damn. You’re not… I mean, you don’t… I mean… _damn_.”

“No,” Mel says, bristling a little in spite of herself. “I don’t. Least, not until just now.”

Neither one of them needs to specify what it is she doesn’t do, and Janice is just about considerate enough that she doesn’t blurt it out anyway. That’s the limit of her consideration, though; she’s got one hand clapped over her mouth, and Mel has a sneaking suspicion it’s trying to cover a smirk. 

“Right.” She clears her throat. “Uh… well, I guess I’m doubly sorry, then.”

Mel splutters. “Would you stop apologising? Goodness’ sake, Janice, you’re not the one who…”

“…jumped me like a cat in heat?” Janice supplies, not at all helpfully. She’s definitely smirking, Mel can see now, and all of a sudden she wants to do a great many things that are the exact opposite of kissing her. “Hell, I just figured it was bound to happen eventually.”

“You…” She stares, slack-jawed. “You did?”

“Sure I did.”

Well, Mel thinks. That’s just plain _rude_.

“And how long, pray tell, have you been sitting around waiting for me to… ah…”

“…jump me like—”

“A different metaphor, Janice, _please_.” Mel massages her temples. “I just reckon it’s kind of improper, that’s all, having these kinds of expectations and not the good grace to let a lady know about them.”

“You’re no lady, Mel.” She gets strangely quiet as she says it, though, like it’s almost a regret. “Not any more, at least. A lady would never throw in with the likes of me.”

“Now, I don’t think that’s true,” Mel says gently. “I reckon you could use a proper lady. Who else is gonna keep you on the straight and narrow, hm?”

Janice snorts. “It’d take more than your womanly wiles to do that,” she says, then takes in a deep breath and holds it in for nearly a full minute. “Look. I really am sorry. It’s just… hell, you ain’t exactly subtle. Even when you try to be. You’ve been staring at me for days now, all big-eyed and moony, like you never saw me before. Figured it had to be because…”

She trails off, then shrugs again, like this really is as simple as all that. She doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed that she was wrong.

“It wasn’t,” Mel says, driving it home in the hopes of dragging a blush out of her. “Or if it was, I didn’t know about it until just now.” She sighs; rather than affronting Janice, she’s just confusing herself. “Goodness, I don’t know. Maybe it was, at that. You’re just so darn vulnerable when you sleep, and… well, I guess I just couldn’t help myself. You never let me see you like that when you’re awake. Always got those darn walls up, that silly self-preservation act of yours, like you really think you’re fooling anyone. And then you’re asleep, and you’re dreaming and talking, and you’re just so…”

 _Beautiful,_ she thinks, but she doesn’t have the courage to say it.

Janice’s face is suddenly very hot. “Now you’re just making excuses,” she mumbles. “We already had this conversation, didn’t we? I must’ve told you a dozen times you’re imagining all that stuff. I don’t dream, and I don’t talk about it, and I don’t—”

“Now…” Mel swallows hard. “I suppose that’s true. But it’s also… well, not.”

Janice groans, deep and frustrated. “Christ, what are you talking about now?”

Mel studies her long and hard, searching for dishonesty. She doesn’t find any, only genuine curiosity and the familiar queasy headache. It’s an earnest question, despite the tone, and Mel just wants to turn around and hide because of all the moments she pictured for this conversation, _now_ really didn’t feature. There’s too much other stuff they need to be talking about, and this as well is just too darn much.

Oh, but the look on Janice’s face right now makes her want to share it all, spill out the truth that’s been eating at her ever since last night. She’s squinting, scowling, looking like she doesn’t know whether to kiss Mel again or just take a swing at her, and Mel might not know much about this strange new _something_ simmering between them, but she knows enough about Janice to know that an opportunity like this doesn’t come around real often. A day, even an hour from now, and she’ll be blocking her out completely.

Mel closes her eyes for a beat or two, then takes a deep breath. _No time like the present,_ she thinks. _Since we’re getting stuff out in the open anyways_.

“Well.” The word sounds very, very small. “You… do you remember how it went, back in Ares’s tomb? Xena, and me, and the way we…”

“Sure.” Janice knits her brows, looking suddenly uneasy. “Believe me, you don’t just forget something like that.”

Mel breathes a sigh of relief. That’s a start.

“Good,” she says, slow and careful. “Now, keeping that in mind…”

*

It takes maybe an hour to talk it through, and of course all Janice has to say is, “That’s bullshit.”

Mel wishes she didn’t expect that. Whether Janice believes her or not, whether there’s some part of her that thinks this makes a frightening amount of sense, she’d take a bullet from her own revolver before she’d let anyone else see it.

Mel wishes she was as blinkered now as she was back then, after Janice agreed to let her ‘tag along’, when she was still deluded enough to think she was signing up with a rational, sensible human being. She gave up that illusion long ago, though; she’s learned a hundred thousand times in the last few weeks that there is nothing rational or sensible about Janice Covington, and there probably never will be. It doesn’t matter what the truth is, doesn’t even matter if she herself sees it; if she’s already made up her mind to something else, that’s all there is.

Mel isn’t the same idealistic gal who signed on with her, though, and she’s learned now how to deal with this blinkered stubbornness in a way that doesn’t end in _‘yes, ma’am’_.

“That’s as may be,” she says, flat and unyielding. “But it’s true just the same.”

“The hell it is,” Janice says. Mel can feel her temper rising, a very different kind of heat flooding her face now; it’s a far cry from the passion of earlier, and it slaps her in the face like a bucket of cold water. “You think I wouldn’t know if I had some centuries-dead sidekick running around inside my head looking for a way out? Like neither one of us have anything better to do?”

“Hush, now.” Mel knows better than to think that chiding will do any good, but she tries just the same. One of them has to cling to common sense, after all. “You were there when Xena done took up residence in mine. You remember how that went. Why’s it so hard to believe that Gabrielle might want to do the same for you?”

“Because there’s no goddamn _point_ ,” Janice snarls, and Mel would swear blind there’s a tremor hidden behind the violence. Maybe she does know, after all, more than she care to admit. “In case you didn’t notice, Mel, we’re not in Ares’s tomb any more. Our lives aren’t in danger now. Hell, even if they were, what do you think that useless tag-along could possibly do?”

“Whatever she needed to,” Mel says, without hesitation. “Goodness, Janice, you’ve read the scrolls, the same as I have. You know perfectly well what Gabrielle was capable of when she set her mind to it. You know how smart she was, how tough and how gosh-darn brave. You know all of that.”

“The hell I do.” Her voice is cold, eyes hard. “All I know is that she was an ace at making herself sound better than she really was.” Janice rolls her eyes, then winces and grabs her head, reminded unpleasantly of her hangover. “You think I don’t know posturing when I see it? Lived with it long enough, ain’t I?”

Mel has a sneaking suspicion she’s not referring to her father or his peers. It tugs at her heart. “Janice…”

“Look. Gabrielle’s the one who wrote the damn scrolls in the first place. First rule of writing, Mel: you gotta make yourself look good. Ain’t no-one else gonna do it for you. The truth can take a hike; all that matters is making it so you’re the hero.”

“Oh?” Mel keeps her voice real low. “So the truth don’t mean nothing to you either, then? Funny, seeing as how you’ve spent your whole darn life trying to prove—”

“Shut up!” The outburst just confirms Mel’s point, of course, and she knows it. Mel suspects that’s why it makes her so mad. “Don’t talk about that. It’s not the same. It’s not.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not.” She smiles, though, sweet and serene, letting Janice know beyond all doubt that she’s got her number. “You’re all talk, Janice Covington. You know it as well as I do.”

“Yeah, well.” She doesn’t deny it, Mel notes, just puts her head in her hands like it’s too much effort to hold it up. “So was Gabrielle.”

“Now, that’s as may be. But she was good, Janice. And I don’t mean she was a talented writer. I mean she was _good_. She was selfless and brave and smart. And she—”

“If she was really that goddamn smart,” Janice spits, “she would’ve figure out by now that I don’t want anything to do with her.”

“Janice…”

“I said ‘shut up’.”

She lurches up to her feet, and immediately has to brace against the wall. Her whole body sways, the blood draining right out of her face until she’s deathly pale again. Mel worries for a second that she might faint dead away, or else do something far more regrettable, but she doesn’t do anything at all; she just stands there for a spell, spitting and snarling curses between gritted teeth.

Mel wants to think it’s the hangover making her behave like this, but as always she knows it’s not that simple. Janice made her feelings about Gabrielle crystal clear right from the get-go.

Mel bides her time, sits quietly by and lets Janice just stand there feeling sorry for herself. She watches in silence as she catches her balance and slowly, _slowly_ steps away. She’s got one hand pressed against her temple, the other inching slowly away from the wall, like she doesn’t trust herself to stay upright without its support. Mel wants to offer herself in its place, catch her as she starts to sag, but she knows exactly what kind of a reception she’d get if she tried it.

Better to play it safe, she decides. She holds her own ground, perfectly still, until she and Janice are both convinced she won’t fall, until Janice’s hand falls from her head to her side, until she looks almost like herself. Only then does Mel trust herself to stand up and cross to her side without trying to help. The last thing Janice wants, she can tell, is to come across as weak, as vulnerable and… well, like her version of Gabrielle.

When she’s certain Janice won’t bite her head off for daring to open her mouth, Mel says, “You ever stop to think that maybe that’s why she does it?”

“The hell are you talking about?” Janice mutters.

It speaks volumes, Mel thinks, that she doesn’t tell her to shut up again.

“Comes out in your dreams,” she clarifies gently. “You really think it’s by happenstance that she makes herself known when you’re out cold, or else so darn drunk that you might as well be? Heavens above, Janice, that’s the only time you’re not chewing someone’s head off.”

Janice shoots her the kind of look that could freeze a volcano at a thousand paces. “Wasn’t chewing _your_ head off when you were sucking my face just now, was I?”

Mel flushes. “Well, now, I don’t think that’s really—”

“Sure it ain’t.” Janice is blind with rage now, irrational like she so often gets whenever Mel brings up Gabrielle’s name, when she suggests they might have more than just bloodlines in common. “Never is when it’s _your_ stuff on display. Only when it’s mine, right?”

“That’s not what I mean, and you darn well know it.” Mel isn’t about to take this, not now, not when she knows just how sore Janice’s head is; it’s not often that Mel feels she could best Janice in a fair fight, but she’d put a solid wager on this one. “Maybe if you stopped to listen once in a while — to me, to Gabrielle, to any dang fool who sticks around long enough — you’d realise that the world isn’t out to get you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” There’s a crack in her voice, though, and Mel’s pretty sure it’s not from the hangover. “You think I give a damn what the rest of the world thinks about me? You think I care?”

“Well, now, I reckon you do.” She keeps her voice steady and even, but her heart is racing as she reaches out, as she finds Janice’s shoulder, follows the curve of her arm down to her hand, catches it and holds on tight. “You drank yourself into a stupor because some old friend of your daddy’s thought it’d be fun to push your buttons. You cried like a baby when you were sloshed, then as soon as you’d sobered up the tiniest little bit you sent me back to bed because you didn’t want me to see you feeling bad. You—”

“Never said that’s why I did it.”

“My goodness, do you really think you needed to?” She squeezes her hand, then heaves a tired sigh. “Don’t you think I know you well enough by now?”

“Mel.” Janice swallows, blinking real fast, then ducks her head before Mel can see her eyes getting wet. “Stop it.”

“Not a chance.” Mel doesn’t resist when Janice yanks her hand back, but her fingers twitch when they’re left empty, aching to follow. “Janice, sugar… you push away anyone who tries to connect to you. Me, your daddy’s friend, Gabrielle… it’s all the same to you. You’re so darn scared of being vulnerable, you’d rip yourself apart before you’d look up and see that we care about you.”

“I don’t want you to…” But her voice cracks, and she shakes her head, and _Lord_ her whole body’s shaking too.

Mel closes the space between them, hands strong and steady on Janice’s shoulders.

“I know,” she says, so gentle, so careful. “But that’s not gonna stop us.”

She leans right in, as close as she can, and kisses her all over again.

It’s sweet this time, and real slow, a great sweeping wave of a thing that shakes the world and leaves it stone-still, and all of a sudden Mel finds that she doesn’t care one little bit if it’s wrong or shameful or anything else.

Janice’s lips tremble under hers. Her eyelashes tremble against Mel’s cheekbones. Her whole body is trembling, it feels like, and there’s nothing Mel can do but hold her close and smother the shivers with her body. They’re on the floor again, neither one of them really sure how they got there, bodies pressed in close and tight and, _goodness_ , Mel has never done anything like this before, not with another living soul, not a woman or a man or anyone else, has never felt her whole heart spill right out through her mouth, her lips and her tongue and her breath, has never let someone else catch her, hold her, keep her close like this.

She’s never felt so exposed, so close to losing control, but she’s not the one who’s trembling, and she’s not the one who pulls away with bright eyes and wet lashes and chokes out, aching and desperate, “… _please_ …”

That’s not her. That’s Janice.

Mel’s never heard her say that word willingly. She’s never heard her say it when she’s awake and aware, conscious and coherent and in control.

She’s never heard her say it when she’s herself.

“Please.” She’s shaking her head, face buried in Mel’s shoulder, not to hide the shame but to press in as close as she can. Mel has never felt so precious in all her life. “ _Please_.”

The word is precious too, and though Mel’s skin feels like crystal next to Janice’s, though she feels as rare and as timeless as those darn scrolls when she kisses her, still she can’t hold a candle to that word, to its meaning as it shakes on Janice’s lips, to the pain she knows it must cause to squeeze it out between teeth so tightly clenched.

It’s not the way it sounds. Janice isn’t begging Mel to hold her or kiss her or touch her, to satisfy her body or soothe her soul or anything like that. It’s not really about the contact or the kiss or even the moment; it’s about _them_ , and the parts of herself she’s held back. She’s splitting herself open now, not just with the way she lets Mel catch her lips and her tongue, but in the way she pours out her feelings through it, the way she lets Mel see the things inside of her that no-one ever has, the razed parts of her that Gabrielle touches when she sleeps and dreams, the secret hidden things she denies and resists and tries so very hard to forget.

“ _Please,_ ” she gasps, over and over and over, and she’s not begging Mel for anything; she’s giving her everything.

Mel pulls her in again, holds her like the world is ending, like there’s nothing left in it but the two of them, and she kisses her until neither one of them can breathe.

 _You’re not Gabrielle,_ she thinks. _And I’m not Xena. But they’re in our blood and they’re part of us, and you can’t deny that forever._

She can feel Janice’s heartbeat, rapid and frantic against her collarbones, and she wants to soothe her until it slows, wants to ease some small shred of the urgency burning up inside of her, but she can’t.

It’s true: they’re not Xena and Gabrielle. That means this is something different, something wholly unique. It’s not just one of a thousand moments shared across a thousand lifetimes; it’s the very _first_ moment, or at least it’s Mel’s very first moment. Xena might be in her, might be a part of her, but Mel’s the one who has to figure out what to do.

It’s Janice who pulls back again, gasping and wide-eyed. Like before, she’s both flushed and pale, hungry and hungover at the same time. Mel could devour her if she wasn’t so afraid.

“Jesus,” Janice says. It’s not nearly as endearing as _‘please’_.

Mel licks her lips, struggling in spite of herself to slow her own speeding pulse. “Well, now,” she manages. “If that’s all it takes to get you to open up a touch, I’d’ve done it long before now.”

“Wouldn’t say I ‘opened up’,” Janice counters, insulted. It makes Mel sad, the way she bristles, like she doesn’t realise how beautiful it is to do such a thing, or how beautiful _she_ is when she does it. “Just… hell, that mouth of yours is something else. You sure you ain’t done this before?”

Mel tries to chuckle, but the sound won’t come out. All of a sudden, she’s the one feeling vulnerable, the one with all her flaws and failings, all her inexperiences out there and on display. All of a sudden, opening up isn’t quite so easy; funny, how it seemed that way when she wasn’t the one who had to do it.

“Never,” she admits, feeling the heat flood to her face. “Wasn’t exactly the polite thing to do, fooling around with folks out of wedlock…”

“Oh, Christ.” Janice claps a hand to her mouth, stifling something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. _Better not be,_ Mel thinks. _You know better than anyone how tough this is._ “If you think that counts as ‘fooling around’ I got one hell of a lesson for you.”

Mel feels her eyes get huge. “Now, I’m sure you’re not suggesting…”

“Uh. No, of course not. Nothin’ to see here.” Janice turns away, flushing furiously. “Hell, I wouldn’t want to sully a _lady_ , would I?”

Mel rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother to counter that. Frankly, she needs a moment or two to process all of this, the racing of her heart, the way her body responded to Janice’s, the way she felt herself ignite in places she’s only ever let herself think about in quiet, private moments, the way that blushing part of her really wants to know what Janice is (or isn’t) suggesting.

It’s all so new, the intimacy and the contact, but still somehow so natural at the same time; it’s like the part of her that remembers Xena has done this dance a thousand times, while the part of her that’s just herself — naïve and young and born of a world where this is not acceptable — can’t keep itself from panicking. It’s going to take a little getting used to, she thinks, if they start making this a regular sort of occasion.

That’s a worry for another day, though. Today is enough of an occasion all on its own, and she’s not about to sit back and let Janice play her usual trick of ducking and running.

“I mean it, though,” she says, and watches Janice’s back go stiff. “You don’t gotta let me in if you don’t want to. The good Lord knows, I’ve been running with you long enough to know it’s just the way you are. But it’s not just about me and you, is it?”

“Sure it is.”

It’s a challenge, and Mel rises to it. She doesn’t say the name, but of course she doesn’t have to. “They’re her scrolls, Janice. How in the world do you expect to keep chasing after them if you don’t swallow your darn pride and let her in?”

“She’s centuries dead,” Janice snaps, though she knows as well as Mel does that death wasn’t enough to stop Xena. “And even if she wasn’t, she was useless. Ain’t nothing she has that’s any good to me, so why the hell should I let her do anything?”

“Because she’s a part of you,” Mel says, frustrated and aching at the same time. “Whatever you might think of her, wrong or right, she’s there. It’s like how Xena’s a part of me, different as we are from each other.”

“That’s different,” Janice says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

“Now, I don’t reckon it is.” She sighs, suddenly weary. “You can put up all the walls you want, but you can’t keep someone out when they’re already inside you.”

“That…” She’s got her fists clenched at her sides, breathing ragged. “It’s none of your business.”

“It is my darn business when you’re dreaming her dreams, crying and begging and carrying on, keeping me awake all through the night because that’s the only way she can get you to listen.”

Janice’s silence makes it pretty clear she can’t argue with that.

Mel touches her shoulder, tries to soothe the tensing muscle with her thumb. She wants to make this easier, to bring it back to the way it felt when they were kissing, but Janice doesn’t seem to want that any more. She shrugs her off like she’s something unpleasant, like they weren’t just rolling around on the floor connected at the mouth. She’s on her feet again in a flash, legs much steadier now, and she’s got her hand on the doorknob almost before Mel realises hers is empty.

“Get your stuff,” she says, and doesn’t look at her. “We’re blowing this town.”

Mel feels the words like a blow shaking through her bones. It’s not the first time — or, heck, even the fiftieth — that Janice has cut off a conversation like this, but somehow it feels personal now in a way it never really did before. She opens her mouth to argue, to say that it’s not Janice’s decision alone to end this here, but of course Janice doesn’t give her the chance. She’s already out the door.

Mel stares at it as it slams shut in her face, feeling the sting as though it hit her square in the gut. 

_Well,_ she thinks sadly. _I guess that’s that._

*

Contrary to last night’s promises, Janice doesn’t give up the keys without a fight.

Well. Much as she might have hoped for a little common sense, Mel kind of saw that coming. Janice was flush with drink when she said it, _“I trust you,”_ like it wasn’t really about the truck at all, out of her head and halfway asleep and clearly having no idea what weight the words were carrying. She would have said any old thing to placate her then, but now they’re coming in hot off the back of an argument and Mel knows better than to think she’ll yield so much as an inch without demanding a mile in payback.

She’s sullen about it, insisting that she’s sobered up just fine, that she’s in complete control of her faculties, that she’ll ace any test Mel sees fit to put her through. Mel doesn’t doubt that’s true — Janice is just stubborn enough to will her own body into submission — but she still has no intention of letting her drive until she’s been clean and dry for at least a full day and night. That’s not unreasonable, it’s just plain common sense, and she’s not about to let Janice’s wilful pride railroad them into a darn accident.

Janice might not be swaying any more, but she’s radiating discomfort; flushed or not, she’s six shades of green, and wearing the squint of someone who’s struggling to see through her headache. Mel doesn’t need to be a genius to know where that combination is likely to land them if she lets her get behind that wheel.

So she waits. Patience might not be Janice’s virtue but it sure as heck is Mel’s, and she’s never yet met a soul she can’t out-wait. Janice rants herself hoarse, throws her little tantrums until Mel thinks she must be ashamed of herself, then when her voice wears itself out she leans against the truck like she’s about to faint.

“You finished?” Mel asks, letting Janice’s shallow, urgent breathing make the point for her.

“No.” Janice straightens for a moment, then slumps back. “It’s mid-afternoon already, for Christ’s sake. There can’t be a drop of the stuff left in my system by now.” Mel raises a brow, wordlessly calling her bluff; mid-afternoon or not, any fool can see that’s not the case. Still, as dogged as ever, Janice clings to her version of the truth like it’s the darn Gospel. “Just let it go, would you?”

Mel rolls her eyes. “You promised,” she reminds her, with little of her usual gentleness. “Though I doubt you’ll remember that, gone as you were. You said you trusted me.”

 _And not just with your precious truck_ , she thinks, but knows better than to conflate this with that.

“Yeah, well.” Janice’s jaw goes white with tension; she’s scowling, face like a thundercloud, and Mel can tell that she’s got it right, that she doesn’t remember a word of it. “Things change.”

Mel needs a moment before she can reply to that. She doesn’t want Janice to see that it stings, not the dismissal but the loss of memory. She knew at the time, of course, that Janice was too far gone to really grasp the weight behind her words, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to look back now, to remember how beautiful the moment felt, how pure and profound the energy between them, how sure she was that Janice was at least semi-coherent when she shared that side of herself. Knowing now that Janice doesn’t even remember it, that it’s all just a blank space inside her head, just one more moment on a canvas of blacked-out regret… well, sure, it cuts.

She wants to shake her for it, but she doesn’t. There are more important things at stake right now, namely the one where Janice is still holding the keys to the truck — and their lives by proxy — in her hand.

 _‘Things change,’_ Janice says, like the world is really that simple. Mel rolls her eyes, hardens them, and says, “Not this one. This one sticks.”

“Over my dead body,” Janice sulks.

 _You get behind that wheel,_ Mel thinks, _and it might just be._

She doesn’t need to say it out loud. Janice looks up at her, and all of a sudden the fight just bleeds right out of her.

It takes a moment for Mel to realise why, to look inside and wonder if maybe she’s not as subtle as she wants to believe either. She thought she was doing well, hiding the hurt in a place Janice was too self-involved or else too oblivious too look, but maybe she underestimated her too because there’s no other explanation for the sudden regret she sees shimmering in her eyes.

Mel knows better than to expect an apology. Janice will never be the kind of gal to go all limp and complicit, to blurt out a heartfelt ‘sorry’, but what she does instead is almost as moving. Without a word, she shoves the keys into Mel’s hand, then turns away with a furious, frustrated yell.

Mel smiles, feeling a sudden wash of tenderness spread all through her. It’s such a tiny gesture in the grand scheme of things, but such a huge one for someone like Janice, and of course Mel is perfectly equipped to see the deeper meaning behind the surrender. It’s acknowledgement, it’s acceptance, it’s giving up a kind of control and biting down before her instincts can make her struggle and fight and resist. Janice is trying, bless her, and though it might not look like much on someone else, on her it’s the whole darn world.

Overcome for a moment, Mel leans in to feather a kiss across Janice’s cheek. It’s a tiny little thing, simple and chaste, the kind of kiss that no-one could possibly misinterpret, but apparently it’s still somehow enough to reduce Janice Covington to blushing, stammering silence.

Mel has never felt so powerful in all her life. Not even when Xena herself was running through her veins.

“There now,” she says. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”

*

Admittedly, it gets a whole lot harder once they’re out on the open road.

Put politely, Mel Pappas is not the world’s best driver. Put less politely, and in terms Janice would certainly approve of, she’s godawful. On the rare occasion Janice lets her take the wheel, forced into the decision by her own exhaustion, she’s usually out cold before they’ve made it more than a couple of miles; even Mel has the self-awareness to concede that’s probably the best way to be when she’s the one in front of the wheel. Her daddy once told her she drives like a drunk old lady, and years later, being older and wiser, she can’t deny it’s true.

Still, she figures, better a metaphorical drunk than a literal one.

Janice, somewhat understandably, doesn’t agree. She’s not used to being awake to suffer through Mel’s less than smooth driving, and even if she was she’s never had to do it with a screaming hangover. All things considered, it’s really no surprise her temper’s stretched out thread-thin before they’re even a mile out of town, and still less of one that she’s getting greener by the minute.

“How’s that head of yours?” Mel asks when they’ve been on the road for an hour or so.

The answer’s fairly obvious, of course, but she feels like making conversation. And, well, better that than the countless others still hovering in the air between them.

Janice grunts, and doesn’t answer for a long while. She’s trying to figure out whether she’s got it in her to pretend she’s fine, Mel knows, and though she could tell her for nothing that she can’t, still she keeps her mouth shut and waits it out. She wants to know if Janice will try it anyway, or give in to the truth.

Unexpectedly, she goes with honesty. “Feels like it’s been run over by a tank.”

Mel doesn’t bother to hide her disbelief. “Oh?”

“Oh, yeah.” There’s a ghost of amusement in her voice. “And _you_ were at the wheel.”

Mel cuts a glance her way. The levity, such as it is, doesn’t reach her face. She’s got her eyes squeezed shut, her forehead pressed against the dirt-smudged window, and there’s a kind of soundless urgency in the rise and fall of her chest. Her breathing is as rapid and heavy now as it was back in that tiny little room, when Mel had her mouth on hers, when she was pressing up against her and whispering _“please”_ , when the world shrank down to just the two of them and a new-old-new kind of intimacy.

The memory is a vivid one, and very powerful; for a moment it makes Mel’s pulse start to quicken too. She knows that the source is very different here, that it’s discomfort not passion making Janice breathe like that, but for just a second her heart all but forgets. She swallows, feels the motion ripple all through her, and it’s only when the truck starts to swerve, when Janice lets out a deep, desperate groan that she snaps back to herself and remembers where they are.

“Sorry,” she says, and this time she means it. “You need me to pull over?”

“No.” The word is another groan, heavier but more controlled. “Just keep going. Just…” She breathes in deep, then lets it out in a heavy shudder. “Believe me. Stopping and starting ain’t gonna make it any better.”

Mel’s not convinced. “You sure?” she presses. “I mean, it’s no trouble. We—”

“ _Mel_.” She lurches forward, gripping the dashboard with white knuckles. “If you don’t shut up and drive, I’m gonna do something we’ll both regret.”

Mel chuckles, but doesn’t press the issue. She could, she knows, but Janice is already feeling so wretched — in no small part the product of Mel’s lamentable driving — that she doesn’t have the heart to make it worse. She watches her for a moment or two, then turns her attention back to the road. It makes it easier to continue talking, to make it into a conversation instead of an interrogation.

“I gotta ask,” she says, pointed but not challenging. “Would it really have killed you to stick around in town for another night? Give your body a chance to recover proper-like? It can’t be thanking you right now.”

“I don’t care whether it thanks me or not,” Janice says. “It’ll do as I say if it knows what’s good for it.”

Conveniently — and completely, definitely unintentionally — the truck chooses that moment to plow over a bump in the road. Janice’s groans turn to something deeper, and Mel wonders how much more of this it’ll take before she’s begging to be killed again.

“You sure about that?” she presses, teasing.

“Knock it off.” Janice whines. “Anyhow. Hangover or no, I didn’t want to risk running into that smug bastard again.”

“Your daddy’s friend?” Mel frowns, genuinely puzzled. “Why? He seemed like nice enough people. And you were getting on just fine with him right up until that silly little competition.”

“It wasn’t _silly_ ,” Janice snaps. “It was… ah, hell, I wouldn’t expect a dame like you to understand.”

Mel doesn’t point out that she might understand just fine and dandy if Janice bothered to take a second and explain the darn thing. That’s her cross to bear, her secret to keep if that’s what she wants, and Mel is past the point of pressing her for anything. Janice can come clean if she wants, or lock herself up tighter than ever; either way, it don’t much matter when Mel need only look at her to remember how she tastes.

“You’re taking it pretty hard,” she says, not pushing, just observing.

Janice bristles a little, but doesn’t argue.

She doesn’t say anything at all, in fact, for a very long time, and when Mel finally dares to cut another glance at her, she finds her staring out the window with a pained look on her face, jaw white and lips pressed tightly together. It’s difficult to tell whether it’s a response to the jolting of the car or whatever sour emotions are roiling inside of her, but Mel supposes it doesn’t much matter one way or the other; the end result is the same.

She lets one hand off the wheel, reaches across to find Janice’s shoulder. She squeezes gently, surprised when Janice doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t shrug out of her grip or demand that she be left alone or any one of the dozen other things she normally does when she’s angry and on display. Most of the time in moments like this, she’s like a trapped animal, always searching for the nearest escape route, the fastest way back to a place where she feels safe and solitary, where she can lick her wounds and pretend they don’t hurt with no-one around to call her bluff.

It makes Mel think of their ill-fated detour, of the way Janice danced and stumbled around the idea of finding a nice place to stop for a night or two; she went to such ridiculous lengths to pretend it was more than just a sweet, thoughtful gesture, then tripped and fell over her own tongue when she finally broke down and admitted that maybe it was after all. Mel can still hear the quiver in her voice when she mumbled, _“hell, maybe you deserve it”_ , like doing a kindness for someone else is something to be ashamed of, like wanting to do it is something even worse. It’s so hard for her, Mel knows, touching people and letting them touch her in return.

She lets Mel touch her now, though, and it doesn’t matter one bit that she doesn’t lean into the contact or smile or relish it or whatever else. It doesn’t matter that she’s not reacting in a positive way; with Janice, the big deal is that she’s not reacting in a negative one.

After a long, almost peaceful moment, Mel feels the muscle in her shoulder go suddenly tight under her fingers. It’s the only warning she gets before Janice does pull away, shrugging out of her grip and turning once again to the window. Her body gives her away; it isn’t resistance or sullenness making her shrink back, but something else entirely. Mel has seen this kind of tension before, and she knows before it happens that it pre-empts a confession, something deep and moving and true.

“It’s stupid,” Janice mumbles at last. “Been a goddamn lifetime since he went. You’d think it wouldn’t still be so…”

Mel closes her eyes for a second, remembering her own daddy, feeling that jagged hole in her heart where he used to be. “Still hurts?” she asks quietly, opening her eyes and fixing them on the road. “Thinking about him?”

Janice bows her head. Her neck’s very pale, but there’s a hint of colour creeping up there, shame and pain in equal measure. It makes Mel want to put her hand there, soothe away the pallor and the unwanted flush.

“He’d be so disappointed,” Janice says after another strained pause.

“Now, I don’t think that’s—”

“It is.” She sounds so convinced, and so utterly devastated. “He never wanted this kind of life for me. Never wanted me to turn out like this. Like…”

“…like him?” Mel offers, hoping that it will help.

Janice shakes her head, and doesn’t tell her to shut up. “Yeah,” she says, like she hates herself for needing someone else to say it for her. “If he could see me now, he’d claw his way back to the land of the living just so he could string me up.”

“Now, I _know_ that’s not true,” Mel says. She doesn’t, of course; she’s guessing blindly, gauging Janice’s daddy by what she knows of Janice. “You proved him right, and made sure the whole world knew it. You did everything he wanted, Janice, everything he couldn’t do for himself. How could he be anything other than proud?”

“Because he didn’t want this!” Janice shouts, a howl like she’s letting out some terrible beast from deep inside herself. “He’d hate me for following in his footsteps, Mel. All he ever wanted was for me to go back home and live out a normal life. Whatever the hell that means.”

There’s a laugh on her lips, bitter and poisoned, but she can’t let it out. Mel squeezes the steering wheel to keep her hands from reaching for her. “What do you think it means?”

“Hell if I know. Like you, maybe? Or whatever the hell it was you did before you took up with me.” She chuckles, wry and humourless, like she’s picturing it. “But that’s not me. He _was_ my home, Mel, and those goddamn scrolls are the only life I’ve ever known.”

Mel’s eyes are stinging. She tells herself it’s dust from the road. “I know,” she whispers.

“I was always gonna turn out like him,” Janice rushes on, almost frenzied, like she doesn’t trust herself to finish if she pauses for even a second. “Never had a choice. He gave me every chance he could, taught me everything I know. But he couldn’t teach me how to be normal. It’s all he wanted for me, but it was the one goddamn thing he couldn’t teach. And every word out of that bastard’s mouth last night just got me thinking, _this ain’t where he’d want me to be_.”

Mel blinks a few times, stopping only when she realises it’s probably not safe driving etiquette.

“So how in the world did you figure drinking yourself to death was any better?” she asks. There’s no judgement in the question, only genuine curiosity. “You thought he’d be more proud of that?”

“No, I…”

But she trails off before she can say it, and Mel can feel the seat trembling in rhythm with her body. _Oh,_ she thinks, the answer hanging suspended between them like a prayer on the air.

“Oh,” she says, her mouth echoing her mind. “You wanted to get yourself so far gone you wouldn’t have to think about it no more.”

Janice takes a deep, slow breath. It’s a confession, pure and heartfelt, and the intimacy is devastating; she’s gotta know she doesn’t need to say anything more, but she does it anyway, for both their sakes. “Something like that.”

Mel doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t rightly know whether she ought to say anything at all; she kind of flatters herself that she knows Janice pretty good by now, and she has a gut-deep feeling that she’d get uneasy if Mel tried to push this. She does that sometimes, clams up and locks her feelings away before they can burn too deep, pretends like she never let them out at all, and it’s taken Mel a long, long time to recognise the tells in her.

It’s painful, and all the more so to someone like Mel who thrives on this sort of thing, on honesty and emotion and heart, on sharing feelings like they share sleeping space and food and all the rest of it. She wants to do right by Janice, but she doesn’t want to give her another chance to disappear inside herself and hide again. Not when she’s come so far, given up so much already. It’s like a tightrope, and _Lord_ if Mel isn’t terrified of this kind of height.

She sits there for a long while, mulling it all over, trying to seek out the best route to the other side. The truck gets the worst of it, knocked about all over the place in the heat of her distraction, and it makes Janice’s hangover all the more audible; the throbbing in her head is an almost tangible thing now, a sharp echo to the gurgling in her belly and her ragged, shallow breathing. Her whole body is a symphony of suffering, like Mel can hear the synapses in her brain, or at least she imagines she does, and they jerk and jolt with every shift and swerve.

Understanding as she finally does, just why she went and brought it down on herself, Mel finds that she actually feels sorry for her now.

She doesn’t speak again until they bounce over another pothole, this one violent enough that the whole truck rattles. Janice’s groan is heavy enough to wake the dead, and Mel starts to worry about her ruining the upholstery; all the blithe stubbornness in the world is little match for an upset stomach, she’s learned, and it’s as much a distraction as a sincere question when she hears herself say, “Are you happy?”

Janice swallows noisily. “Did you say something?”

Mel chuckles a little, but doesn’t demur. “I said, _‘are you happy?’_.”

It’s a distraction, sure, but she’s serious too.

 _If you are,_ she doesn’t say, _he’d be happy too. Whatever you might think about him, whatever he might’ve thought about you, it don’t matter none in the end. If you’re happy doing what you do, that’d be enough for any father who ever cared half as much as yours did. He’d be proud, Janice. He’d be so darn proud._

Janice isn’t quite so poetic about it. Not that Mel would expect her to be, of course, but she would’ve liked something a little more erudite than a grunt and a groan.

“Right now?” she mutters. “Gotta say, I’m really not. Can’t you at least try to stick to the goddamn road?”

“Janice…” Mel chides, gentle but not without weight. “You know what I mean. Are you happy here? Living like this. Running around all over the place after those darn scrolls. Chasing adventure or whatever the heck you feel like. Driving and rolling wherever the wind takes you.” _Doing all those things with me,_ she thinks, but doesn’t say. “Your life, Janice. Are you happy with it?”

Janice ponders the question for a spell. Mel watches the way she shifts in her seat, the way her throat tightens and releases in time with her swallowing, the way she massages her temples with one hand; she’s not feeling good. They should pull over, she knows, but Janice will never ask for that, not while she’s still drawing breath all on her own. She wouldn’t thank Mel for pointing out her discomfort, and that’s why she doesn’t try.

The distraction, such as it is, is the only thing Mel knows she’ll accept.

“Funny,” Janice murmurs after a moment, voice thick but steady. Mel wants to kiss away the acid she hears behind the words, but she knows better than to take her eyes off the road right now. Janice would pull away if she thought she was being watched, and Mel doesn’t want that to happen. “If you’d asked that question just a couple of months ago, I probably would’ve said ‘no’.”

“Why’s that?” Mel asks, genuinely surprised. From what she’s come to understand of Janice, she lives and breathes for this life of hers.

Janice shrugs. Mel catches the motion out of the corner of her eye, surprised too by how easy she makes it seem. She knows from experience that this is the farthest thing from easy, that Janice is struggling through every word, every thought, every breath. It’s nothing to do with the hangover, only the fact that she’s spreading herself open. Mel remembers how naturally it came to her, the kisses and the flurries of passion, and almost smiles; it’s no real surprise that Janice is more ashamed to bare her feelings than her body.

After a long moment, she takes a breath and answers.

“Plenty of reasons,” she says, simple and clipped. “His goddamn reputation, for one. All this time trying to shake it off, scratching and clawing, just trying to…” She sighs, frustrated, and shakes her head. “Hell, I guess it never really mattered what I did. He’s stuck under my skin, and there’s no getting him out of me. Kind of like…”

She trails off, but Mel doesn’t let her get away with not saying it. “…like Gabrielle?”

Janice doesn’t answer. “Plus there’s the whole ‘woman in a man’s world’ thing,” she says instead, evasive as ever. “Hell, you’ve seen it yourself these past few weeks, how hard this stuff is for a woman. You gotta dig twice as deep to get taken half as seriously, and that’s if they even bother to hear us out at all.”

“Goodness,” Mel says, “I thought you liked the challenge.”

“I do.” The resentment in her voice tells another story, though. “But Christ, it’s exhausting sometimes.”

Her breathing evens out a little as she says it, like she’s thinking of something else, something that pushes all those less-than-pleasant feelings away. Then she lifts her head and looks at Mel, and _Lord_ if Mel doesn’t just forget she’s supposed to be watching the road.

It’s amazing how readily this feeling comes on her now that she understands it better, how easy it is to indulge this sense of peace and warmth and belonging, amazing how fast she made the transition from wondering why she wants to look at Janice to staring and staring and not caring why.

“That all?” she asks, prodding a bit for the unvoiced confession she knows is there, the deeper truth shimmering just below the surface, in the places only she can see. “Injustice and frustration?”

“Nah.” Janice takes another breath, looks Mel straight in the eye, unashamed. “Guess I was kinda lonely too.”

Mel can’t keep the smile off her face. “Were you, now?”

“Stop that,” Janice gripes. “Getting all smug about it, like it’s something to be proud of. But hell, if you really gotta know… yeah, you make it easier. Yeah, you make my life less of a goddamn chore. Yeah, you make me…”

Mel’s breath comes short. Her stomach tingles.

“…happy?” she asks in a tiny, vulnerable voice.

Janice doesn’t look at her. Her skin is blotchy again, flushed in a way Mel is starting to recognise, not with anger or discomfort or embarrassment but with honesty and sincerity and _feeling_. The sight of it makes her heart start to hammer in her chest, a cannon-loud pounding that doesn’t quit.

She never thought she’d see this. Even after the last couple of days, even after she had Janice’s tongue in her mouth, even after she felt her pressed against her, heard her whisper _“please”_ in full control of her faculties, even after all the things Janice has given her, the silent little sacrifices and those precious, hoarded moments. Even through all of that, she never expected to see it on the surface like this, to hear it almost, _almost_ spoken aloud. It’s one thing to get carried away in the heat of the moment, Mel knows, but it’s another thing entirely to open up and confess.

Not that Janice says the words, of course. Heck, she doesn’t even nod. Mel knows that she won’t, that she probably can’t; even now, there’s so much that is so far beyond her. She’s come a good long way over the last couple of days, let out so much of herself, but real, open communication is more than she’s ready for just now, more than she’ll ever be ready for until she opens up and accepts this kind of intimacy from more than just Mel, until she turns it inwards too, and seeks out the beauty in her most hated places. Maybe one day, but not today. And that…

Well, it’s more okay than Mel thought it would be. Sure enough, Janice doesn’t say _‘yes’_ , but Mel finds that her heart sings just as loudly because she doesn’t say _‘no’_ either.

What she does say, hilarious in its predictability, is “Shut up and drive.”

Mel laughs, rich with affection, and says, “Yes, ma’am.”

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

Evening sneaks up faster than either of them expects.

Mel pulls over as the sun begins to set, blaming poor visibility when Janice starts scowling and demanding to know what the problem is. Truth be told, she could probably keep going another hour or so, but Mel isn’t used to driving for so long without a break, and by the time she has a viable excuse to stop it’s almost more for her own sake than it is the setting sun.

Supper is a quiet affair. Janice doesn’t talk much, seemingly lost in her own little world, and Mel doesn’t try to pull her out of it. She doesn’t want to draw attention to their meagre supplies, the barely-food she managed to pick up back in town. Stocking up was her duty, and it’s such a rare thing that she gets tasked with doing anything; the last thing she wants is to give Janice a ready-made excuse to yell at her for being irresponsible or foolhardy.

Blessedly — or, heck, maybe worryingly — Janice doesn’t seem to care. She barely says a word all through the meal, and if she notices that it’s less than edible she doesn’t remark on it at all. She spends her time staring at the horizon with a strange look on her face, focused and quietly intense, like she’s trying to make out some distant shape or figure, some nameless mystery that Mel can’t see, and though she’s not sulking or scowling like she normally does, still Mel is struck by how far away she seems, how lost to her.

“How’s your head?” she asks after they’ve eaten.

Janice blinks a couple of times, but doesn’t answer. “I’m going for a walk,” she says instead, and stalks off with her hands in her pockets.

This isn’t anything strange in itself, though Mel would have liked an answer to the question. Janice wanders off like this almost every time she gets the opportunity, under the banner of finding somewhere peaceful and quiet to smoke her silly cigars and think serious academic thoughts and whatever else she does that Mel wouldn’t possibly understand.

Mel lets her get away with it, this time like always, because she’s learned from experience that trying to argue only ends in frustration for them both. Never mind that it’s getting dark and they’re out in the middle of nowhere, never mind that Mel doesn’t care a whit if Janice smokes or thinks or does whatever she wants in her presence; apparently she has to find someplace solitary for maximum broodiness.

She’s not gone very long, but she leaves Mel with her precious revolver. _“Just in case,”_ she says, though she doesn’t say in case of what. No doubt she’s just trying to make a point — even Janice isn’t so cynical as to think they’re likely to be attacked out here — but the gesture feels a whole lot more significant than it should. She hasn’t ever done that before; heck, until the other day she’d never even let the gun out of her sight, and the one time she did give it up — when Mel refused to let her sleep with it one more night — it was under such heavy protestation she might as well have wrestled the darn thing out of her hands by force.

She never thought she’d see the day Janice would hand it over, not just willingly but almost cheerfully.

She toys with it a little bit, takes aim at a nearby tree and tries to imagine it’s a real person. Mel’s never had any problem with her imagination before, but this one’s admittedly hard, and more than a little unsettling. She wonders what it would take to make her pull the trigger, how frightened or angry or desperate she would have to be to do something like that. Janice does it without thinking; sometimes when she’s bored, she lines up empty tin cans on the hood of the truck and shoots them off one by one. _“Gotta stay sharp,”_ she explains, and doesn’t mention the wasted ammo.

Mel could never do that sort of thing. For one, it seems kind of pointless, and for another she’s not made of the same stuff Janice is. It takes courage to keep her hands steady, and talent to aim straight, and where Janice has been doing that sort of thing her whole life Mel barely even knows how to hold the darn thing. She’s seen the way Janice glances back at her when she’s shooting those tin cans, though, and she knows she’s itching to teach her the ropes, to insist that she learn how to protect herself.

It won’t happen, of course. Any time she brings it up, citing the obvious need for ‘self-defence’, Mel just flashes her most dazzling smile and says, _“Now, isn’t that why I keep you around?”_ Janice always glares at her for it, but she never argues.

There’s something deeper in this, though. Mel knows that Janice isn’t fool enough to expect that she’ll pick up the darn thing and start firing off rounds without proper supervision. It’s a different kind of statement, leaving her alone with the thing; it’s not a call for self-defence or an offer protection or anything like that, but a wordless gesture of faith. Mel wonders if she does remember last night after all, even just unconsciously, if there’s some fuzzy-brained little part of her that recalls looking up through the liquor haze and mumbling, _“I trust you, Mel”_.

She’ll never say it sober. Mel knows that, and she doesn’t expect it. Janice has said a lot of things since the hangover kicked in that Mel never thought she’d hear from her, but openly admitting that she trusts her — or, heck, anyone — is still a bridge too far.

It always has been, at least as long as Mel’s known her. She remembers that very first day in that weather-beaten old tent, how long it took for Janice to believe she was who she said she was, the flicker of regret in her eye as she lowered the gun from Mel’s face and said, _“It’s hard to know who to trust”_. Mel often wonders if she didn’t really mean something else entirely. It’s not that Janice doesn’t know _who_ to trust; it’s that she doesn’t know _how_.

When she finally winds her way back to the truck, around half an hour later, she has a peculiar look on her face. Heavy-lidded, like she’s tired but not exhausted like Mel might expect, and she’s wearing a fuzzy, lopsided sort of expression. It’s definitely not a smile — she never smiles — but it’s a whole lot looser than she’s ever let herself get before. Going by the look of her, Mel can’t help wondering if maybe the cigar’s not the only thing she’s been smoking.

She doesn’t say anything about it, of course, just leans against the truck for a long while, staring quietly at the horizon like she did over supper, like maybe she’s not really done with her thinking after all. Mel wants to talk to her, to touch her, maybe to try putting her lips on her again, but she doesn’t do any of those things. It’s so rare that Janice gets thoughtful without getting angry, and she doesn’t want to disturb the peace.

It’s a long while before Janice snaps back to reality, before she shakes off the lingering fugue and stirs. She turns to study Mel, keeping one elbow on the truck’s chassis and bringing her hat down low over her face. It’s one of her tells, the way she covers and hides her face, and Mel knows what it means: she’s about to talk about something that makes her feel vulnerable and she doesn’t want Mel to see how deep it touches her.

“You okay?” Mel asks, prodding real gently, like a surgeon with a scalpel and a twitching body. “Still thinking?”

“Guess so.” She breathes in very fast, then lets it out very slow. “Look, this… you… you know it won’t change anything, right?” She must be watching Mel real closely, because all she has to do is blink a couple of times and Janice catches the confusion right away. “This whole… ‘fooling around’ thing, if that’s what you wanna call it. Doesn’t change our working relationship.”

“I never expected it to,” Mel says.

“Good.” There’s a shift in Janice’s tone, though, like maybe a part of her was hoping she would. “Because it doesn’t. I’m still in charge. You’re still under me. Doesn’t make any difference that someday I might wanna be under… uh…”

She trails off lightning-fast, clearing her throat, and Mel can’t rightly tell which of the two of them turns a more improbable shade of red.

“Now, I think you’re getting a touch ahead of yourself,” she chides, because how in the world is she supposed to respond to that kind of implication? “What we’ve been doing, it’s not the same thing as… what you’re suggesting.”

Which… well, it’s not to say that sort of thing isn’t in their future. Their _distant_ future. Maybe, possibly. It’s just that it would take a whole lot more getting used to than she’s capable of right now. And ideally in someplace other than a beat-up old truck in the middle of nowhere.

“Right.” Janice coughs again, drives back the blush seemingly by pure force of will, then rushes on. “I’m just sayin’… this ‘fooling around’ thing, if you gotta call it that. It doesn’t change the way we work or the way we are. My stuff is still mine, Mel, okay? It’s gotta be mine.”

“Well, I’m sure I know that,” Mel says. “I’d never take nothing you didn’t give freely.”

“Good.” She doesn’t sound so convinced this time around, though. “You don’t get to try and boss me around or worm your way inside my head or my…” Her breath catches, and she loses her struggle against the rising red. “You can put your mouth on me all you want, but don’t go expecting me to start ‘opening up’, or whatever you said. That’s not gonna happen. It’s just… it’s not. It can’t. So don’t expect it.”

“But I do expect it,” Mel tells her. “And I reckon… if you’re real honest with yourself, Janice, I reckon you do too. Heck, I might go so far as to say there’s a place somewhere inside you that’s maybe even looking forward to it.”

Janice hisses. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play coy,” Mel says. “You done let me see more of you these last two days than you did the last three weeks combined. Now, why do you suppose that is?”

Janice shrugs, lets her teeth show. “You got me drunk.”

“You got yourself drunk. Don’t you go putting that one on me, you hear?” She’s smiling as she says it, though; it’s hard not to. “And you know just as well as I do that’s got nothing to do with it.”

Janice opens her mouth, then shuts it again with a glare. That almost never happens — the mouth-shutting, not the glare; the glare happens all the time — and it takes a whole lot of restraint for Mel to keep from commenting on it. It takes a lot for Janice to back down from anything at all, even a mostly harmless conversation with someone she kinda sorta maybe trusts, and Mel watches the struggle play out in the muscles of her shoulders as she works to balance the weight of it.

“Guess not,” she sighs at last, head bowed low to shadow her whole face. “It made a nice excuse, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure it did.” Mel takes a deep breath, digs down deep inside her hidden places, searches for her own kind of struggle to make this a fair playing field. “Well, for what little I’m sure it’s worth, it’s not like this is a picnic for me either.” Janice quirks a brow, dubious, as Mel knew she would be. Go figure that the stubborn little mule wouldn’t look too far outside her own angst. “Well, think about it. Didn’t rightly expect to go falling for you, now, did I?”

“Falling?” Janice echoes, in a tiny voice.

“Hush, now, you heard me. And you knew it before I did, so don’t go acting like it’s news all of a sudden.” Mel slaps her lightly on the wrist, chiding; it breaks the ice and the tension for both of them. “Stow that ego of yours away, right now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She says it lightly, sort of mocking but with real warmth, and it lifts Mel’s spirits more than she expects. She leans in, unable to help herself, and kisses her. Well, sort of kisses her, anyhow; it’s as light and as quick as she can make it, still uncomfortable being so visible out here with the open sky above them and the great wide world spread out in all directions. Still, though, it’s a gesture, a show of not-exactly-private affection like she never would have imagined a week ago.

“Point is,” she presses. “I had my life all figured out before I found that old telegram. Knew who I was, where I was going, what the world had in store for me. And to this day I don’t know why I didn’t just send one right back, but I didn’t. I felt something in that ol’ paper, something that called to me and said, _‘hey, now… this woman, she needs a gal like you’_. And you did. And I guess I didn’t realise that this gal might’ve needed a woman like you too. It’s a two-way street, Janice. You and me, both of us. And sure, it’s new and it’s frightening, and it’s—”

“ _Dangerous_ ,” Janice tells her. There’s a sharpness in her now, not a threat but a warning. “You know that, right?”

Mel feels a flutter in her chest, like a kind of promise from a long time ago. It _is_ dangerous, yes, and not just for the obvious reasons Janice is pointing to. It’s dangerous, too, for all the ways it carves at her heart, at both their hearts, all the ways it makes Mel remember how it felt to be Xena, all the ways it makes Janice bite down and protect the soft places where Gabrielle wants to make her home, all the ways it sings in their blood and reminds them where it came from. It’s dangerous in the thrilling way that all new things are, the way that threatens pain if it all goes wrong and so much joy if it doesn’t, and sure, of course Mel knows all that; hasn’t she been fighting it since before she even realised what _it_ was? She’s naïve, but she’s no darn fool.

Still, though, she doesn’t say so. She doesn’t want Janice thinking she’s worried about the simple, straightforward kind of danger.

“Dangerous,” she says instead, digging down for a bravado that’s as new and strange as her feelings. “More dangerous than crawling around in haunted tombs, setting off booby traps and waking up centuries-old gods? More dangerous than getting into gunfights with near-perfect strangers or possessed by the spirits of long-dead warrior princesses? More dangerous than—”

“All _right_!” She sounds so urgent, almost desperate. “Jesus Christ, you’ve made your point.”

Mel sighs, and softens. “And it’s not just us, is it?” she asks, a reminder that neither one of them needs right now. “The whole dang world’s about to blow sky-high. Who even knows if it’ll still be here next year, or the year after?”

“Mel…”

Janice’s voice is real tight, sort of heavy, like she’s spent a lot of time trying very hard not to think about this stuff. Mel gives her shoulder a squeeze and moves on.

“I’m just saying,” she says. “There’s not a place out there that isn’t dangerous.” She sighs, struck perhaps for the first time with the raw, frightening truth of that. “Not a single place.”

Janice raises her head, lifts up the hat just enough for Mel to catch her eyes. They’re so pretty, star-bright against the gathering dark, like the kind of gemstones that other kinds of archaeologists might dig for in the dirt out there, the kind of sparkling trinkets that mean the world to people who aren’t them. Mel has never been a material girl, at least not in any way that counts, but looking down at Janice right now, she’d pay any price just to watch her sparkle.

Apparently Janice feels it too. Some part of it, anyhow. She leans in, breath warm and face glowing, and she catches the back of Mel’s neck with one hand, strokes her cheek with the other.

“I can think of one,” she says, and takes Mel’s open mouth.

*

Later, close to bedtime, she gets quiet again.

Mel watches as she fumbles for her cigars, leaning back against the truck again and lighting up as quick as she can. There’s a kind of frenzy to the way she does it tonight, more so even than usual, like she’s aching for more than just the nicotine, like it’s the blood in her veins she’s choking on.

Most nights Mel would just sit back and leave her to it, put as much space between herself and that second-hand smoke as she can, but she doesn’t do that this time. They’ve been kissing on and off for the last couple of hours — shy and self-conscious on Mel’s part, and rich with a passion she didn’t know she had — but a part of her is still hungry for contact. Even something chaste, a brush of limbs when they settle in together or the look in Janice’s eyes when she catches Mel’s in the moonlight. It doesn’t much matter, really, what kind. Just _something_.

So instead of backing off and giving them both some space, she moved right in, shuffling close enough that she can taste the smoke, and says, “You okay?”

“You even gotta ask?” Janice asks. She chuckles, or tries to, but there’s no masking the thick shadows spreading under her eyes, thrown into bold relief by brim of her hat. “Just kind of beat, I guess.” She sighs. “All that booze finally catching up with me.”

“Well, can’t say you didn’t deserve it,” Mel says, then loosens up a touch. She can feel something else on the air between them, something very fragile. “You reckon you’ll be able to sleep okay?”

It’s a loaded question, weighted carefully, and they both know it’s not really about her ability to drift off. Janice knows perfectly well what she’s talking about, and suddenly those shadows look much deeper. Mel cups her face, thumbs the lines etched out between them. They shift against the contact, the lines and the shadows both, like waves on rough seas, and it’s not really a surprise when Janice avoids the question entirely. She turns her head instead, and presses her lips to Mel’s palm.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

Mel sighs. “Janice…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She closes her eyes for a second or two, and Mel’s heart hitches in rhythm with Janice’s breath against her hand. “I don’t know, okay? I got no idea if I can or if I will or… hell, anything. This bullshit of yours… Gabrielle and her stupid dreams. I don’t want them. I can’t afford to let my thinking space get hijacked by some lovesick puppy.”

“That’s not what she was,” Mel tells her. “Maybe if you listened to her once in a while, you’d see that for yourself.”

“Mel.” She pulls away, turns her body towards the horizon. The cigar shakes a little between her teeth. “I just don’t want her running around in my head, all right?”

Mel studies her face, searching for a deeper truth. “Well, now, I don’t see why. Aren’t you supposed to be searching for the truth? Learning those old stories?”

“I’m a historian, Mel, not a goddamned storyteller.”

“You sure?” That’s a loaded question too, and a dangerous one. “Seems like storytelling’s in your blood.”

“Shut _up_.” She kicks off from the truck, storms away a few steps, then tosses the cigar to the ground. There’s a vicious kind of force in the way she stomps it out, grinding the butt into the dirt until there’s nothing left of it at all. “I don’t want to listen to her, Mel. I don’t want anything to do with her. I don’t want her thoughts, and I don’t want her goddamned feelings, and I don’t want…”

Voice sharp and cracking, she trails off. The sudden piercing silence is more telling than a thousand words.

Mel takes a deep breath, perhaps a kind of warning, then crosses to her side. She keeps her pace slow, her body open, like a ranger approaching a wounded animal, giving Janice all the warning she needs to protect herself.

“What don’t you want, Janice?”

Janice shakes her head. She drops into a crouch, pretending to mess with her bootstraps or something, but Mel knows that she’s just trying to shroud her face again. Well, she won’t let her do that, not this time; she kneels as well, ignoring the way it sucks the dirt into her clothes, and yanks the hat right off Janice’s head.

 _Don’t you hide from me_ , she thinks. _Not after everything you done put me through these last couple days. Don’t you dare try and hide yourself away from me now._

Janice doesn’t meet her eye, but of course she doesn’t have to. Without her hat, she’s utterly exposed, and there’s no place she can turn that’ll hide her pain. Mel touches her face, brushing the curve of her jaw with her fingertips then coming to rest against her lips; Janice tries to pull away, tries to break free, but she doesn’t seem able to move at all. She huddles there for a second or two, quivering and helpless like a bunny hit by the truck’s headlights… then, without warning, her shoulders start to heave.

“I don’t want to go through it it again,” she blurts out at last, all rage and pain, a whisper that’s trying so hard to be a scream; it’s just about the most horrible sound Mel’s ever heard. “I already know what it’s like. I’ve been there, for Christ’s sake. Why’s she want to put me through it again?”

Mel frowns. “Now, what in the world…”

But she doesn’t need to finish the question. The answer is right there in front of her, and she doesn’t need to hear it said. In the part of herself that still feels so connected to Xena, the place where they both look down at their fierce little companion and feel the same yearnings, she knows exactly what this is about, exactly what part of Gabrielle’s story Janice is trying so hard to run from. She knows it, like a thunderclap making the whole darn world make a new kind of sense, and she hates herself because she should have seen it coming long before now. She should have looked deeper, should have read all the signs and understood, but she didn’t and now it’s here and it’s too darn late for hindsight. For her, for Xena, for any one of them.

“Janice…” she whispers, and she wants so desperately to weep.

“I already know,” Janice chokes again. It’s much quieter this time, but her shoulders are still shaking so hard. “I already lost someone who was my everything. I already got left behind all on my own, lost and lonely and God only knows what else. I’ve been there before, I’ve done it before, and I already know how it feels. I know, I… dammit, I _know_.”

Her voice breaks, caught like a spasm in her throat, and Mel would give anything to make it stop. “Hey.”

Janice shakes her head, helpless. “I don’t want to feel that way again, Mel. I don’t want to go through it all again. I don’t… I _can’t_ … I…”

But that’s all she’s got in her, and the words die in a strangled, struggling sob. No doubt it’s the only one Mel will ever get to hear, but it’s more than enough to tear a hole clean through her heart.

“Hush, now…” she murmurs, though she knows it won’t do any good. She’s smart enough not to touch her, but she has to do something, has to try. “C’mon. Hush, now…”

But when has that ever worked against a tide of grief? Mel knows that feeling well enough herself; she lost her own daddy too, just a year or so ago, and she still feels that breath-sucking punch in her gut every time someone mentions his name, every time she finds herself using one of his techniques on a particularly tough piece of syntax, every time she thinks of him at all. She’s felt that loss too, soul-deep and world-shaking, but she doesn’t need to say the words to know that their losses are worlds apart.

Mel’s daddy was a great man, successful and wise, honoured and respected by everyone he knew. When they laid him to rest, it was safe and sound, surrounded by family and friends, and so full of love that she could hardly breathe.

She remembers the funeral like it was yesterday, remembers taking Mama’s hand and holding on so tight she thought she might hurt her, remembers looking around and seeing his peers, his friends, all the people he helped and who helped him in turn, all of them sharing the moment with tears in their eyes as they lowered him into the ground. Most of all, more than anything else in the world, she remembers thinking, _here lies a man who was loved_.

The same isn’t true for Janice’s daddy. She knows that. She’s never asked about it, never let herself wonder what kind of middle-of-nowhere corner of the map he might have died on, but she can tell real well by the ache in Janice’s voice that she was his only world just as surely as he was hers. She doesn’t need to ask to know that there weren’t any well-wishers at that little funeral, no friends or family, no mother’s hand to hold, not a darn soul to share that moment with. Janice buried him all alone, and when it was over she had to mourn him that way too.

 _Just like Gabrielle,_ the part of her that was Xena thinks.

All of a sudden, Mel is the one crying. Not strained and held back like Janice, but real and raw and right from the very deepest parts of her. She can’t tell how much of it is herself and how much comes from Xena; she only knows that when she gazes down at Janice, when she thinks of her and Gabrielle, of all the ways they’re different and the one terrible way they’re the same, she hurts for them both.

Janice straightens up after a moment. She’s sniffling, but only a little. She seems embarrassed, frustrated that she lost her precious control, if only for a fraction of a second. Mel wants to shake her; she can’t help thinking, not for the first time, that letting in a little of Gabrielle’s openness and honesty would do her much more good than harm. They need each other, Gabrielle lost and alone and so desperate for someone who understands her pain, and Janice who has to learn that she doesn’t have to do everything all by herself.

“I don’t want to feel that way again,” Janice says at last. She’s not looking at Mel; she’s not looking at anything. “It’s so damn hard to be alone.”

Mel’s breath stops. The words resonate right down to her bones, to the tremors she sees in Janice’s. It feels like a kind of echo, a shadow thrown across them from Xena’s past and a glimpse into their own future, and even though her body and her thoughts are wholly her own, still she can’t quite tell which of the two of them is in control when she leans in again and kisses the top of her head.

“You’re not alone,” she says.

*

They sleep on the side of the road.

They don’t make it a discussion it or anything; it just sort of happens that way. Janice will never say out loud what she’s thinking and feeling — _I need you to hold me_ — but maybe she really has opened up more than she’d care to admit because Mel finds that she doesn’t really want to hear it. She can see it well enough in her face, in the tight set of her jaw, in the way her eyes turn to steel and her spine gets ruler-straight when she rummages around in the back of the truck for the heavy blankets. She can see it all, and that’s enough.

“It’s too cramped up front,” Janice is muttering, like she really expects Mel to believe that’s the reason.

Mel doesn’t play coy. She doesn’t mind Janice calling the shots, figuratively speaking, but she’s not about to let her call the literal ones too. With a smile that she doesn’t even bother to hide, she cocks her head at Janice’s hip, the revolver snugly holstered there

“And where, pray tell, is _she_ gonna be sleeping?”

Janice glances down, flushes, then scowls. “Mel…”

“Oh, no.” She’s still smiling, though, because she knows that for once she has the upper hand. “Don’t you take that tone with me, Janice Covington. We’ve done had this conversation too many times now. This isn’t a three-way partnership, you hear?”

Well, of course Janice doesn’t just let that slide. She smirks like she’s just found a fifty-dollar bill in her back pocket, and says, just as cool as you please, “ _Partnership_?”

Mel doesn’t so much as blink. “You’ll leave it in the truck,” she says. “Or else you’ll be sleeping out on that blanket by yourself.”

The smirk falls off Janice’s face as quick as anything, and she actually turns a little pale. She covers it up real well, of course, like she covers everything well, but she can’t hide it from someone who knows her as well as Mel flatters herself she does by now. She’d never deign to accuse Janice of being frightened of anything, but she would swear to the grave that it’s panic she sees behind her eyes in the half-second before she hunches her shoulders and turns away.

“Do what you want,” she grunts, trying to shroud the sentiment with sullenness. “Like I said, I just want to stretch my back. I don’t need you for that. I don’t need you for…”

But she can’t say it, can’t even pretend it, and for a second or two Mel feels terribly guilty for pushing her like this. She sighs, contrite, and reaches for Janice’s shoulder. Janice doesn’t resist the contact, but she doesn’t relax into it either. _It’s a start,_ she’s saying, _but you gotta try harder._

Mel, as eager to please as ever, does just that. “You know I wanna be with you,” she says. “But I’m not about to risk getting my head blasted off for the privilege. Now, is that really such a terrible thing to ask?”

She can feel the muscles in Janice’s shoulder, tight enough that she knows they must be causing her some pain. Automatic, as though awakening some long-buried instinct, her fingers shift over the skin, massaging out a little of the tension and applying pressure to places she didn’t even realise she knew. _Come on,_ she thinks. _Relax a bit._

Janice does. Slowly but surely, guided by Mel’s ministrations, she does. And there it is, a flicker and a flash and she leans into Mel’s grip, sighing like it’s the most wonderful thing in the world.

“Jesus,” she says, voice quivering. “Do you have to do that?”

Mel smiles to herself, secure in knowing that Janice won’t see it, then pulls her in real close. Janice’s shoulder blades are hard against her chest, and of course she’s squirming and struggling in about half a second, pulling herself free with a low, chest-deep whine.

Well, that’s understandable. Mel knows that it’s easier for her to focus on the physicality of moments like this, the little points of contact where Mel’s bosom presses into her shoulder blades, the quieter intimacies hidden below the skin and the synapses and the soundless strength. It’s a scapegoat, struggling against her touch, but it was never Mel’s intention to make it about that. She just wanted to hold her a little, to ground the both of them in something simple and solid.

 _The darn gun doesn’t matter,_ her aching heart cries. _She matters. So you suck it up and do whatever it takes to make her feel safe, you hear?_

She’s about a hair’s breadth away from giving in and saying all that out loud when Janice beats her to the punch. The last thing in the world Mel expects from her is surrender, but there it is, shining as clear as the starlight in her eyes when she turns around to look Mel in hers.

“Fine,” she says. “If it means that goddamn much to you, I’ll leave the gun in the truck.” Her eyes flash in a pale imitation of a threat. “But if we get killed in our sleep, it’s all on you.”

Mel chuckles. “I reckon I’ll take that chance.”

She doesn’t add that she’d take any chance in the world, just as long as it ended with Janice in her arms.

They settle in easily enough, one blanket spread out on the ground and the other pulled tight across their bodies to hold in the heat. Mel expects Janice to take charge when they lay down, just like she does in everything else, but she doesn’t; it’s more like the way she was when she was drunk, exposed and flushed and slightly dizzy. _“Shut up and hold me,”_ she said then, trying in vain to make it an order; this time, she just grabs Mel’s arms and pulls them tight around her waist.

“Don’t let go of me,” she says.

It’s not an order, and she doesn’t even try to hide the tremors in her voice, the hope and the fear. Mel holds her as close and tight as she can, finding Janice’s hand, linking their fingers together to make them inseparable. She bows her head, presses a kiss to her shoulder, and swears, “Never.”

Body warm against her, Janice nods.

She drifts off slowly, tensing and twitching and uncomfortable. Mel knows that she’s trying to fight the inevitable, frightened like a child of what they both know is waiting. Mel tries to ease the panic as best she can, humming against the back of her neck, nonsense melodies and words that aren’t words. It doesn’t matter what she says, she knows, or if it makes sense; what matters is that she’s the one speaking, that she’s here and she’s not going to disappear.

Mel is sleepy too, more comfortable than she’d care to admit all wrapped up in Janice’s warmth like this, but she wills herself to stay awake, ready and braced for when Janice starts to dream.

She knows what to expect this time. Not just the cries and the pleas and the pain, but the source as well. Before, she naturally assumed Janice was dreaming about her own past, her father’s death or her mother’s abandonment, some tragedy or trauma that left her frightened and broken. Now she knows better, and the part of her that once was Xena has been dealing with these nightmares for millennia.

She expects the words by now, _“never”_ and _“please”_ and _“I don’t care”_ , but they still pack a mean punch when they come. 

Janice’s face is twisted when she rolls over, when the curve of her cheek catches the moonlight. It’s wet already, like her body was just waiting for an excuse to vent its grief. Mel bows her head, kisses away the moisture, and Janice responds from some place deep inside herself, whimpering then pressing her face against Mel’s neck; her jaw is tight, eyes squeezed shut, like she’s not dreaming so much as enduring some terrible torment.

“You…” she chokes, and her voice is so heavy, weighed down by too much emotion. Mel understands that feeling all too well; she’s been through enough herself these last couple of days.

“I’m here,” she whispers hushed and reverent. Then, when Janice’s body shudders as though responding to her voice, she adds on a whim, “… _Gabrielle_.”

It works. For good or for ill, Mel can’t quite tell, but it certainly does something; the thrashing stops in a heartbeat, and Janice lets out a low, unfettered sob. “I love you, Xena.”

Mel sobs too, silently and to herself. “I know.”

But for the trembling, Janice is completely still. She fits so perfectly in Mel’s arms, and for all that she struggles and scrambles against herself she never once resists her. Mel can do as she likes, pull her in so close that there’s no air between them at all, kiss her forehead or her cheek, even the curve of her shoulder when she bows her head, and Janice accepts the contact like it’s the most precious gift. In a rare moment of selfish self-indulgence, Mel thinks back to yesterday, to the way Janice yielded to her kisses, the heat in her as she begged for more.

She wishes it was that simple now too, wishes she could wash away Gabrielle’s cries and feed Janice’s, replace the pleas she can’t answer with the ones she knows she can. She can’t undo Gabrielle’s loss, but she can make darn sure Janice never has to see another.

“How…” Her lashes flutter, wet against Mel’s cheek. Mel ducks her head to kiss them dry. “How am I supposed to go on without you?”

The tears are thick in her voice, catching the moonlight against her skin, and Mel struggles to silence her own; she has to bite down on her tongue to keep from letting her own grief grow too loud. She tells herself it’s all right, it’s unimportant now, it’s someone else’s long-dead memory, but how is she supposed to believe that when Janice is weeping in her sleep and the part of Mel that was once Xena can feel its heart breaking all over again?

She doesn’t say anything. She can’t. But she hears, as clear as a bell in her head, Xena whispering, _“I’ll always be with you,”_ and she knows it’s as true now as it was then.

It’s a long, long time before she finds her voice again — _her_ voice, not Xena’s — and longer still before she trusts herself to actually use it. Janice isn’t speaking much now either; she murmurs Xena’s name a few times, each a fresh kind of desperation, then goes quiet, soundless sobs shaking both their bodies. Trembling too, Mel finds the salt-stained tracks on her face and kisses them away once more.

“I’m here,” she says. “You hear me? I’m _here_.”

She can feel the broken pieces of Xena’s heart inside her chest, jagged and razor-sharp, but she can’t let this be all hers. It’s their moment too, hers and Janice’s, and the passion rises up so much deeper than she expects when she looks down and sees Gabrielle’s pain etching its lines in Janice’s face.

 _You had your time,_ she thinks. _For pity’s sake, let us have ours._

Janice is shaking in her arms. “Never again,” she begs, frightened and desperate. “ _Please_. Don’t ever leave me again.” 

“I won’t,” Mel promises. Her heart is crying Gabrielle’s name, torn apart and hammering with Xena’s grief, but she doesn’t say it. She can’t undo Gabrielle’s loss, can’t take back Xena’s choices; she can only be what she is, and that is here and now, and Janice’s. “It’s you and me now, Janice. Not them. _Us_. You and me. And you don’t ever gotta be alone again.”

A final shudder wracks them both, powerful enough to steal Mel’s breath, and then Janice stills completely, body slackening in the limp, post-dream unconsciousness that Mel recognises well by now. She can feel the tension bleeding out of her body, pain spilling like paint from an upturned bucket, pouring colour back out to replace the dark dreams.

“I love you,” Janice whispers, thick with tears. “I love you.”

It’s only later, just as Mel feels herself slipping into sleep as well, that she realises she didn’t say _‘Xena’_.

*

In the morning, Janice turns to her and says, “I remember.”

She’s leaning against the truck again, chewing on a stick of jerky and pretending that counts as breakfast. Mel doesn’t need to ask why she brought the subject up now; it’s written all over her face. It’s easier this way, with the food as a barrier between them, a ready-made distraction in case she needs to deflect. Easier than when they’re driving, anyhow, with nothing but the open road to fill the space between silences. She’s pushing her own boundaries, Mel realises, forcing herself beyond her comfort zone, not because she wants to talk about this but because she thinks Mel’s earned the right to hear about it.

She doesn’t rightly know how to respond. If she says too much, shows her cards too early, she’ll scare her away before she’s even said anything. It’s happened before, more times than either of them count. Too little, though, and Janice will get all upset about it, huffing and scowling and carrying on. One way or the other, it’s always a tightrope with her, and maybe Mel has been keeping company with her just a little bit too long because all of a sudden it’s not so much infuriating as it is thrilling.

She takes a moment to collect herself, waits until Janice’s eyes start to narrow, then pitches her voice real careful and says, “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Janice takes a big bite and doesn’t bother to chew before swallowing. “She… my God, she was in so much pain. So lonely. So…”

She trails off, shaking her head, and all Mel can think of is the way Xena’s heart broke. “I know.”

She expects a scowl or something, maybe even a contrary _‘no, you don’t’_ , but it doesn’t come. Janice just grunts a little, then crumples up the jerky wrapper and tosses it over her shoulder. She’s always doing this sort of thing, putting out her cigars or tossing her trash out the window without so much as a thought for the environment. Little surprise there, but it still drives Mel halfway to distraction.

“You’re smarter than I give you credit for,” Janice says after a moment. “Guess I should listen to you more often, huh? Let you be in charge sometimes?”

Mel shakes her head, stoops to retrieve the jerky wrapper. Janice might live like some kind of animal, but she has no intention of doing the same thing herself. “If I was,” she says with a sigh, “I’d tell you to stop doing that.”

“Of course you would,” Janice mutters.

She shakes her head, eyes rolling back, but the mocking is gentle and good-natured for once. Mel notices that her eyes are clear this morning. No liquor haze, no dark circles, nothing. Whatever pain she might have shared with Gabrielle last night, it seems to have made a big difference that she did it by choice, as close to willing as she’s ever going to get. For most people it wouldn’t mean very much, but Janice isn’t most people, and Mel knows how big a step it is to surrender. She knows how hard she’s fought against this, how much pain and grief it’s caused. That she’s allowed it at all, enough to remember it in the morning…

“I’m proud of you,” Mel hears herself say.

Janice, of course, only glares. “Oh, shut up.”

There’s no playfulness in her now; Mel recognises a plea for silence. They won’t touch on this again, not until they absolutely have to. Janice needs time to process it, to figure out where Gabrielle’s threads fit in the tapestry of her own life, how much of herself she’s willing to share. She needs time to work through her experiences — hers and Gabrielle’s, both — and she can’t do that with Mel breathing down her neck. _It’s done,_ she’s saying. _Or at least it has to be for now._

Mel respects that. She knows how raw Janice gets when she’s hurting, and the part of her that remembers Xena knows how Gabrielle used to get the same way. She’ll let it drop, and hope that one day Janice will pick it up again and see that it hurts less.

“So, what now?” Mel asks.

Janice grunts. “What do you think?” she snaps. “We’ve still got a job to do, don’t we? This bullshit doesn’t change anything.”

“Well, I’m sure I know that.”

“Then why ask?” Janice squints at the horizon, as though searching for the site of her next dig. It’s out there waiting for them, that big ol’ world of possibility and promise. “You know what your problem is? No _vision_.”

“Now, I don’t know if I’d say that…” Mel muses, though she suspects it’s probably true. Janice’s definition of ‘vision’ is ‘ambition’, and Mel’s not sure she feels the same way. “I just don’t think as big as you, that’s all.”

Janice makes a strange sound, but doesn’t challenge her. Mel wonders if perhaps she wasn’t quite as dedicated to the insult as she wanted to be.

They both go quiet for a long while after that. Janice watches Mel’s face for maybe a few seconds, then turns back to the horizon. Well, Mel can’t deny it’s prettier, the sun casting its long morning shadow over the land as it rises up and up, the dust and dirt stretched out for miles in every directions. How can a plain ol’ gal from South Carolina ever compare to all that open space?

It’s so darn flat out here, and there’s no escaping the vastness of it. On long, draining days, it makes Mel dizzy, but Janice never seems to notice, never seems to think about how small they are next to so much nothing. Mel wonders if that’s what she means by ‘vision’, if it means looking at the great wide world and seeing all the tiny grains of sand that make it up.

Janice is always looking to the distance, the destination, and she seldom cares how much she has to go through to get there. Mel, who rather prefers the simplicity of the journey, sometimes wishes she could slow her down, make her look around and smell the flowers. She never tries, though, because she knows it would be like spitting in the rain. Janice is her own worst enemy; Mel’s long since made her peace with that.

Well. As much peace as she can, anyhow. It kills her sometimes, reading those scrolls and then returning to the real world, looking up to see how far apart Janice and Gabrielle truly are. Of course, Mel’s not much like Xena either, but it feels so very different when she’s everything Xena wished she could be and Janice is so much of what Gabrielle would have despised.

Xena struggled her whole life with the violence inside her; in her final moments, Mel knows, she was at peace because she’d come so far from the warrior she was. Knowing that her legacy is a bit more humble, a bit more homely… well, Mel doesn’t need to have Xena inside her head to know that it must be a kind of relief. She only needs to have read the scrolls, the guilt and self-loathing that Gabrielle describes so vividly.

Janice has a lot of that too. She’s like Xena was at the very beginning, or maybe like Gabrielle at the very end, in the days and weeks they don’t have scrolls for yet, the time that came after Xena was gone and Gabrielle was alone. Janice is cut apart just like that, all full up on the things that Xena needed Gabrielle to break from her, all those awful emotions that might have consumed her if she didn’t have that ‘useless tag-along’ to protect her from herself.

Mel doesn’t imagine herself as anything like Gabrielle either, but she imagines herself as someone who knows Janice just as surely as Gabrielle knew Xena, and maybe there’s some hint of that timeless connection between them too. Between the centuries-old memories and the brand new feelings… well. Who knows for sure?

Not Mel. She learned long ago never to presume she knows anything. Still, though, when she looks at Janice, when she sees all the things Janice hates in herself, when Mel sees those things so differently knowing beyond all doubt that they’re beautiful, she can’t help thinking _is this how Gabrielle felt when she looked at Xena and knew she wasn’t beyond saving?_ She can’t help thinking _is this how Xena felt when she saw Gabrielle smile for the first time?_ Most of all, she can’t help thinking _is this what the scrolls meant when they said ‘soulmates’?_

After a long, sort-of peaceful moment, Janice ducks her head. Mel recognises by now the way she pulls her hat down over her eyes, the way it broadcasts her sudden feeling of vulnerability almost more so than she would do if she’d just left herself exposed. It’s the opposite of what she intended, Mel knows, and feels a secret little thrill to think that she’s probably the only one in the whole wide world who’s ever gotten close enough to recognise it.

At long last, scowling down at the ground, Janice says, “You know it goes both ways, right?”

Mel frowns, tries to remember what in the world they were talking about. “Not having enough vision?”

“No.” She wrings her hands, frustrated though she knows Mel isn’t doing it on purpose. “Christ, you know what I mean.”

“I surely don’t.” Mel tries to look compassionate, though she knows Janice isn’t looking at her face. “If I did, do you really think I’d waste my breath by asking?”

Janice sighs. She breathes in through her nose, lets it out slow and even and steady, then fumbles in her pocket for a cigar. Mel watches her slip it into her mouth, biting down a little harder than she normally might, but she doesn’t light the thing. She just stands there with it clenched between her teeth, as though it’s enough just to be going through the motions, giving off the illusion of routine and normalcy and whatever else, pretending today’s exactly the same as any other.

“You’re not the only one who ain’t going anywhere,” she blurts out in a rush. “Okay?”

Mel swallows. _Oh_. “I…”

But Janice rushes on without giving her a chance to respond. “You’re… you’re not the only one who’s gonna stick around and see this thing out and… and…” Her voice is shaking. “You ain’t alone either, Mel, okay? You ain’t.”

“Well, now, I never once thought I was.” It’s true, and she smiles because Janice doesn’t understand yet how it feels to be so comfortable, to have such faith in someone else. “But goodness, it’s nice to hear it once in a while.”

“Yeah.” Janice grunts, and doesn’t take her eyes off the horizon. Her hat casts great long shadows across her face, but Mel can see through them, and knows what lies beneath. “So. That’s that.”

 _Yes,_ Mel thinks. _Yes, I reckon it is._

It strikes her now, not for the first time, how beautiful Janice is when she’s let her walls down even just the tiniest little bit, when it’s just the two of them and she doesn’t have to watch her back or put on pretences or be anything more or less than what she is. It’s still such a rare thing, so fragile and so darn precious; Mel wonders if she’ll ever stop being awed by it, if it’ll ever be anything less than a minor miracle every single time, if it will ever cease to light her up on the inside.

A part of her hopes that it will, that one day they’ll be so comfortable with each other that little moments like this will become commonplace. It’s a nice idea, a future like that, but another part of her — a big one — can’t help hoping it doesn’t. She wants it to always feel like this, rare and precious and exhilarating, right up to their very last breaths.

A moment passes, then another, then dozens more. Mel watches the sun creeping its way up through the sky, and then she watches Janice watching that endless stretch of earth and dust and potential. She doesn’t know which sight is more breathtaking.

“Still a long way to go,” she says. “You wanna hit the road?”

The question is genuine, but she doesn’t bother to hide her reluctance. Given the choice, she’d want to stay here all day, just drinking in her blessings and being alive. But then, of course, she doesn’t have Janice’s vision.

Janice studies her for a long moment, eyes glittering under her hat like buried treasure, like the stories in those scrolls she loves so much. She reaches down after a beat or two, finding Mel’s hand as though by instinct and holding on tight.

“Nah,” she says. “I’m happy where I am.”

She lifts her head, lifts her hat, and lets Mel see her smile.

—


End file.
